I recall my first exposure to a lot of these.  I was tasked with developing a sales pitch for reruns of Private Secretary, the ancient Ann Sothern black and white sitcom that Metromedia somehow owned rights to.  Our head of sales was an older man and had seemed to recall the ratings were almost as strong as those of the show it was often compared to by critics, I LOVE LUCY.  I was a young, naive geek who had never heard of the show then.  Metromedia paid for two trips for me to spend four long days in Nielsen’s Palo Alto offices, with posh hotel and rental car, to sift through years of these to create a story.  It took me that long because a) I couldn’t stop reading these little historical documents (this was one of the only libraries anywhere that had books that old and b) Palo Alto pre-Facebook was gorgeous and the hotel far nicer than my apartment.  Plus the company was already being sold and our CFO actually urged me to get as much over a company he thought would soon fire us all.

P.S:  I somehow crafted a plausible and relevant ratings history (it was indeed not Lucy ratings, but it still frequently did time period winning shares) and our sales head found a patsy at Nickelodeon to buy the show.  Look it up.  PRIVATE SECRETARY ran on Nick at Nite for years.

Your weekend may be busy, but you now get to experience what I did from your couch.

Enjoy.

 

I found a site that has scans of Nielsen Pocketpieces from 1978-June of 1988:

https://www.ratingsryan.com/p/nielsen-pocketpiece-archives.html

Not yet an hour after leaving work and there goes my weekend. 

My inside sources say that right now the ball is in the producers’ court to figure out a way to deliver THE GATES to CBS on effectively a barter basis that will include the purchase of spots elsewhere across the Paramount Global platforms.  It’s essential how P and G did business with CBS during the glory days of daytime.  CBS had inventory to sell on their own while P and G maintained premium positions and billboards.  Given the uncertainty attached to the potential acquisition of Skydance don’t expect an immediate decision.  It’s also entirely possible they will find another option such as an hour of CBS News 24/7, akin to what NBC did to replace Days. 

But I promise you—whatever they do, it won’t be a game show

I can't even imagine what they were thinking advertising the Davidson version as having a "new host." They had to have known that Bob, between his ego and his "try-and-fire-me" attitude, would not react well to that.

My understanding from executives who built the sales plan is that a one hour version would have had limited ratings upside since the reality is you cannot clear a one hour strip on network affiliated stations in prime access nationwide.  In central time zone markets, particularly larger ones like Chicago and St. Louis, only a half -hour exists on most big three affiliates. And unlike Feud, which was offered in modular versions to accommodate those situations, Price’s structure made that option impossible. 

Once NBC offered up its prime real estate in LA, any thoughts of an hour were scrapped.  And they did not want Barker.