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No one has reported his here, but as of this week, the 3-4PM hour is now Lingo and MG76, with Lingo displacing MG73. Another run of Millionaire now airs from 5-6PM. Looks like Russian ROulette, which aired its last first run episode on 4/1/03, is off the schedule.
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There are already several threads about this on the GSN board. Really not too surprising to see a shakeup in the afternoon schedule. GSN ran a total day 0.2 rating in October, according to the Starz press release (http://\"http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/11-11-2004/0002404211&EDATE=\"). That's not horrible by the network's historic standards, but it ain't all that great, either. So Millionaire gets wheeled out in late afternoon to attract a few more eyeballs. It's been GSN's warhorse since last October, but they're riding this nag hard.
After the return of All New 3's a Crap and Hollywood Showdown from the long-lost, I wouldn't be surprised to see RR reruns eventually resurface on GSN. Who knows, Inquizition might turn up one of these days. (Extreme Gong? Nah, banish the ghastly thought.)
Another tweak occurs in the prime time schedule, at least if you believe Zap2it. Dodgeball gets trimmed to one hour Thursday night, with Dog Eat Dog and WBSM taking the other two hours.
Also, the poker show starts next Tuesday, with a couple showings interspersed with Blackjack eps. Speaking of Blackjack it gets a marathon (http://\"http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/11-29-2004/0002551463&EDATE=\") Sunday, December 19. Which means it joins Feud, Dodgeball, Lingo, WBSM and Millionaire in recent or upcoming marathons. This network is marathon-crazed.
The second season of civvie Blackjack and the horseracing show start the week of January 10.
By the way, Starz promises to release those ratings every month, which would be a nice source of free info on the cable universe. Sure, the numbers are limited. No viewer totals, no demos, no individual show numbers. But it's better than the scanty info currently available for free on the web. At least it provides a quick and dirty idea of who's who in the cable business.
Starz (oddly enough, GSN's corporate sibling) of course has some self-interest here. They want to show how they outrank many ad-supported cablers. That's kind of apples and oranges, but I'll take the numbers, anyway. And the Starz exec does make a good point that movies really are big for many cable operations.
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Didn't realize G4 was doing so bad.
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Yeah, it's too bad about RR, especially since it's the top rated original with a .38, which is only .04 less than Extreme Dodgeball. I doubt it'll be coming back, but you never know. And yeah, G4TechTV is doing really bad. There is about an 80% chance reported of it turning back to G4TV. I am still sticking with that something is up with the Sony license and GSN. Sony was already not reportedly "friends" with GSN. I mean, there were plenty of other shows to get rid of on the network that did much worse. Russian Roulette was technically a syndicated show, anyway; just, and for what reason Sony decided I will never know, a syndicated show to GSN exclusively. I'm actually shocked that Sony left RR on the network for so long with no new episodes. Also, I wouldn't be shocked to see Jeopardy leave pretty soon either. Oh well, as long as they keep showing half way decent shows on GSN like they have been, it's cool. I haven't really watched the network except in primetime for about 2 months anyway. I get sick of the constant repeats.
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Was 0.38 for October? Seems pretty high given GSN's overall numbers for the month. Haven't seen anything anywhere about Sony's unhappiness with GSN. The network is on the verge of full-year profitability after some horrendous red ink in the past, so it looks like a strange time for Sony to get upset.
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[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Dec 1 2004, 01:26 PM\']Was 0.38 for October? Seems pretty high given GSN's overall numbers for the month.
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Yeah, it was .38 for the month of October. I confirmed it with GSN. Again, I can give the name of the person who gave me the info if you need proof. I have 3 people that actually helped me, if you want their names. Lingo got a .33. Match Game got a .2. Family Feud is currently the biggest classic with a .4, actually tied with Extreme Dodgeball and Blackjack. Millionaire is not suprisingly right up there too. Stuff might have changed between Sony and GSN before too, but I know that there was some bad blood before. I know that Mark L. had some "interesting" things to say about GSN to me when I talked to him last week.
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Sure, if those folks don't mind their names appearing on the web. I'd like to see if they could provide some more numbers.
Does MG's number average all the showings, including late night? That might account for the big gap between it and Feud.
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No, I can give their name, but not their email. They specifically asked me in the response not to give their information out. I can copy that email to you if you want, with the address obviously edited. And they told me those are the only shows they could give me info about for that month.
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Well, I don't want to push if they've got privacy concerns. It ain't easy coming by individual cable show numbers except for a very few top performers.
As for G4 not doing so well, my biggest surprise was CNBC practically falling off the page. I heard they ran into trouble after the NASDAQ crash, but a 0.1 total day and prime time? Ouch.
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What we need is somebody who works at an ad agency as a time buyer. Then we could get all the numbers for all the shows.
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The interesting thing here is that GSN is tied with some more heavily-hyped channels that you would think would be doing better than they are (Hellooooo, Bravo! Hellooooo, VH1! Helloooo, E!) Of course, I know demos are also a factor, but it's interesting to see the ratings company the relatively-unsung GSN keeps.
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RR is the best "Pre-Reality" era original GSN has. Its a shame that it is off the schedule. Why couldnt it have been Lingo! *ducks from fans*
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[quote name=\'Red\' date=\'Dec 1 2004, 06:53 PM\']RR is the best "Pre-Reality" era original GSN has. Its a shame that it is off the schedule. Why couldnt it have been Lingo! *ducks from fans*
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.....Whammy drops thousands of ping pong balls on Red......
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[quote name=\'Red\' date=\'Dec 1 2004, 06:53 PM\']RR is the best "Pre-Reality" era original GSN has. Its a shame that it is off the schedule. Why couldnt it have been Lingo! *ducks from fans*
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Because GSN isn't paying the money that they do for RR on Lingo. Yeah, if anything, Whammy is the lowest rated original game show; that would have been nice to ditch.
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[quote name=\'itiparanoid13\' date=\'Dec 2 2004, 01:02 PM\'] Whammy is the lowest rated original game show; that would have been nice to ditch.[/quote]IIRC, shortly after it's debut GSN sent out a release that said that it achieved it's highest rating on the station.
Ignorant on so many levels espcially since the show never came close to that again.
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[quote name=\'cmjb13\' date=\'Dec 2 2004, 01:30 PM\'][quote name=\'itiparanoid13\' date=\'Dec 2 2004, 01:02 PM\'] Whammy is the lowest rated original game show; that would have been nice to ditch.[/quote]IIRC, shortly after it's debut GSN sent out a release that said that it achieved it's highest rating on the station.
Ignorant on so many levels espcially since the show never came close to that again.
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I meant worst during current ratings. And yeah, Whammy was the highest rated show on the station, but then when RR debuted it was, and then when Lingo debuted it was, then when the Scandal debuted it was. Nothing since.
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[quote name=\'itiparanoid13\' date=\'Dec 2 2004, 02:45 PM\']I meant worst during current ratings. And yeah, Whammy was the highest rated show on the station, but then when RR debuted it was, and then when Lingo debuted it was, then when the Scandal debuted it was. Nothing since.
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Actually, I remember no such thing about Russian Roulette or Lingo setting any ratings records on the network. I recall reading Lingo and RR both pulling a .7 at one point or another, and Whammy! doing a .8 for its premiere, which, at the time, they mentioned it was the highest rating of an ORIGINAL show in GSN's history (Of course, "Big Bucks" blew all that out of the water).
Tyshaun
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Trust me, I contacted GSN about past ratings. Whammy got highest, then Russian Roulette, then Lingo, which stayed that way until now, or at least last week. Lingo got up to a .9 and Russian Roulette had up to the upper .8s, around .87 I was told. Whammy was the lower .8s, around .83. And yeah, didn't The PYL "Scandal" get a 1.1? That's really good for a crappy barely known digital cable network at that time.
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Ratings are only as good as the advertiser results they bring. If more "Rascal Scooters" and Insurance policies are being sold to more people watching FF than RR, then FF will prevail. Similarly, if, Mountain Dew sees an uptick in Dodgeball-viewer age sales, it will continue to advertise in those types of shows, despite lower ratings.
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I actually hate the rating system. It doesn't mean anything because it only takes a group of people to do it, not the entire nation. With all the digital cable boxes, they really should be able to get ratings from those.
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[quote name=\'itiparanoid13\' date=\'Dec 4 2004, 01:30 PM\']I actually hate the rating system. It doesn't mean anything because it only takes a group of people to do it, not the entire nation. With all the digital cable boxes, they really should be able to get ratings from those.
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And then we enter the world of potential invasion of privacy issues. Would you like any Comcast employee to release how many times you were watching "Real Sex" on HBO and use it to blackmail you? Granted, if you order Playboy or Spice on PPV, they potentially already have that kind of deadly information, but privacy policies would state that if the Comcast employee tried to pull any cheap stuff on you and got caught, he'd be fired and brought to court. As much as I'd like to have a PVR, there's still the feeling that anyone who's an employee, whether it's TiVO, Replay or the cable company, can look at my list and wreak havoc with it. I just feel uncomfortable with the cable company having wide-open access to my viewing patterns.
The people who run the ratings say that their samples are scientifically-balanced to form a model group of the public and are as accurate as humanly possible, particularly anything that electronically records viewing. Since the broadcasters and advertisers need a scorecard and there isn't anything else out there that doesn't present privacy issues, under the circumstances the current ratings system is probably the best possible solution until someone else figures out something better.
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[quote name=\'uncamark\' date=\'Dec 4 2004, 07:59 PM\'][quote name=\'itiparanoid13\' date=\'Dec 4 2004, 01:30 PM\']I actually hate the rating system. It doesn't mean anything because it only takes a group of people to do it, not the entire nation. With all the digital cable boxes, they really should be able to get ratings from those.
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And then we enter the world of potential invasion of privacy issues. Would you like any Comcast employee to release how many times you were watching "Real Sex" on HBO and use it to blackmail you?
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Yeah, that's true. I, for some horribly stupid reason, keep forgetting the privacy issues with that stuff.
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[quote name=\'uncamark\' date=\'Dec 4 2004, 08:59 PM\']The people who run the ratings say that their samples are scientifically-balanced to form a model group of the public and are as accurate as humanly possible, particularly anything that electronically records viewing. [/quote]
Which was fine back when they used a couple thousand homes to measure the ratings of three networks. But now that there are hundreds of choices, the samples haven't gotten that much larger, and they ludicrously continue to ignore significant chuncks of the audience, anything less than 1.0 just doesn't strike me as particulatly relevant. In other words, the difference between a "measly" 0.3 and a "huge" 0.7 could easily be attributed to a dog pawing at a remote.
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[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Dec 5 2004, 02:03 PM\']In other words, the difference between a "measly" 0.3 and a "huge" 0.7 could easily be attributed to a dog pawing at a remote.
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We should be so lucky.
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[quote name=\'itiparanoid13\' date=\'Dec 1 2004, 01:19 PM\']G4TechTV is doing really bad. There is about an 80% chance reported of it turning back to G4TV.
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It will, come in January, when the "Tech Tv" part of the name is slated to be dropped.
Which is a big punch in the gut for loyal Tech TV viewers.
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[quote name=\'rugrats1\' date=\'Dec 5 2004, 04:01 PM\']Which is a big punch in the gut for loyal Tech TV viewers.
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Ah, the BIG punch came when the merge happened and Comcast killed all of the good shows in favor of their crappy video game review programs.
This of this as the light follow-up kick to the nutz. :)
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[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Dec 5 2004, 05:52 PM\']
This of this as the light follow-up kick to the nutz. :)
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The name change & dropping of the quality programs was the gut-shot. The name change is the nut-shot afterward...That begs the question: What will the figurative call to the police be? :)
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Nielsen is expanding their sample to ten thousand households and rolling out people meters to get better info than the old diary system. Folks in the business have complained about the accuracy of Nielsen's numbers since the Jurassic period.
I really don't see how the complaints can be tested unless a competitor begins collecting comparable data. The broadcast networks, who have been getting slapped around by Nielsen's numbers for a long time, talked about setting up such a competitor a couple years ago but nothing came of it. It's safe to say that such a broadcast-sponsored competitor would have produced lower numbers for most cable outlets, which would have set off a new round of complaints...
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The name change & dropping of the quality programs was the gut-shot. The name change is the nut-shot afterward...That begs the question: What will the figurative call to the police be? :)
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I'm just counting the days until Judgement Day and X-Play are merged into one show (Judgement Play? X-Day? X-Judgement Day?), with Tommy Tallarico and Adam Sessler as co-hosts, and Morgan Webb and Victor Lucas take over the Electric Playground. Now they've G4-ized The Screen Savers and made Kevin Rose second-fiddle once again. The worst part is they got rid of the audience. No more Woo Woo Guy? BOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
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[quote name=\'wvoutlaw2002\' date=\'Dec 12 2004, 05:21 PM\']The worst part is they got rid of the audience.
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Actually, that was a great move.
I really didn't understand why there was one in the first place.