Date 9/14/09 9/21 9/28 10/5 10/12 10/19
10/26 11/2 11/9 11/16 11/21 11/20
WK 1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12
M: 18.4/5.3 5.7/1.8 5.6/1.8 4.3/1.4 4.9/1.5 4.7/1.4
4.6/1.3 4.3/1.3 4/1.2 4.6/1.2 4.5/1.4 4.7/1.3
T: 10.7/3.4 6.3/2.3 7.1/2.3 6.2/2.1 5.8/1.9 5.4/1.8
6.1/1.8 6.5/2.0 5.7/1.4 6/2.0 4.9/1.9 DARK
W: 13.1/3.5 6.4/2.0 6.6/1.9 5.7/1.7 6.2/1.7 5.2/1.5
5.0/1.5 4.7/1.3 4.7/1.4 4.8/1.4 5.1/1.6 5.6/1.5
Th: 8.8/2.7 5.0/1.7 5.0/1.6 4.9/1.7 5.2/1.8 5.0/1.7
4.4/1.6 4.7/1.7 4.6/1.6 4.8/1.6 5.0/1.5 4.7/1.5
F: 7.4/2.1 5.7/1.5 5.5/1.5 5.3/1.4 5.0/1.2 6.2/1.4
5.1/1.2 4.6/1.2 4.7/1.2 4.8/1.3 3.5/1.0 4.8/1.4
*AVE: 11.7/3.4 5.8/1.9 6.0/1.8 5.3/1.7 5.4/1.6 5.3/1.6 5.0/1.5
5.0/1.5 4.7/1.4* 5.0/1.5* *4.6/1.5 5.2/1.5*
Date 12/7 12/14 12/21 12/28 1/4/20 1/11
1/18 1/25 2/1 2/8 MEAN MEAN
WK 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 (Tot) (#4
- #22)
M: 4.7/1.3 4.8/1.5 5.8/1.6 3.2/.9 4.8/1.5 4.8/1.6
4.6/1.3 4.3/1.2 3.9/1.1 4.3/1.2 5.4/1.6 4.5/1.3
T: 8.4/2.9 5.2/1.8 5.2/1.5 3.0/.9 6.4/2.2 6.2/1.9
6.3/2.1 6.3/2.0 DARK 5.9/1.8 6.2/2.0 5.9/1.9
W: 4.5/1.3 5.5/1.6 4.6/1.1 4.4/1.3 5.2/1.6 5.4/1.6 4.6/1.2
DARK 4.2/1.2 DARK 5.6/1.6 5.0/1.4
Th: 5.8/1.9 5.2/1.7 DARK DARK 4.6/1.4 4.4/1.3 4.5/1.4
4.3/1.2 3.9/1.2 DARK 4.9/1.6 4.7/1.5
F: 5.8/1.5 5.6/1.4 3.7/1.1 3.4/.9 5.8/1.4 5.4/1.4 DARK
5.0/1.4 4.5/1.2 DARK 5.1/1.3 4.9/1.3
*AVE: 5.8/1.8 5.2/1.6 4.8/1.4* 3.5/1.0* 5.4/1.6 5.2/1.6 5.0/1.5*
5.0/1.4* 4.5/1.3* N/A 5.4/1.6 5.0/1.5*
This is the last report on the ratings of the Jay Leno Show, which premiered
Monday, 9/14/09 and had its final broadcast on Tuesday, 2/9/10.
With only 2 shows during Week 22 I did not calculate weekly averages. Both
shows were close to his slumping numbers for those nights in recent weeks,
Monday was actually slightly higher, and Tuesday, his final show, really did
go out with a whimper, as it was his worst Tuesday number in 5 weeks (not
counting reruns) and I think tied for his 3rd worst Tuesday night ever.
>From what I could tell NBC did not really hype this as any big goodbye to
the show, and his core audience knows they will see him in a few weeks, in a
time slot they probably prefer anyway, so I don't think there is much to
learn from this. Except this: after all the numbers and the hype and the
debate, one that this is crystal clear is that there never was a lot of
affection for the Jay Leno Show - even among people who were strong fans of
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I think that reflects two things: 1) What
people liked about this show (among the people who liked the show at all)
were the elements that were left from the Tonight Show, and what they never
really warmed up to at all were the new elements developed for the JLS.
Initially we heard a lot about how the JLS was going to be different from
the Tonight Show - more of a comedy and less of a talk show. To the extent
they were ever honest in saying that, they utterly failed in accomplishing
it. 2) What makes Leno successful at 11:35 is what hurt him with the JLS -
he is inoffensive - for most people he is soothing and reassuring; he does
not arouse strong feelings. People who like Conan or Dave love them strongly
in a way that most people who like Leno do not (but both Conan, and
especially Dave, also inspire strong negative feelings as well).
Since this is the final JLS report, I went back and found the demo ratings
for the 5 or 6 weeks I had previous omitted (initially I had consciously
decided to only focus on total viewers, since that is what I cared about;
But I realized after a while that the demo ratings do really have the most
impact on a show being canceled - and I also realized that total viewers is
often not very helpful because the number of people watching television
fluctuates from week to week, depending on several factors. So I started
reporting the demo ratings, but never felt like going back and getting the
ones I missed (it requires searching individually in google for each night's
ratings from TV by The Numbers, since TVbtN does not easily archive this
themselves). When I got around to looking for that this morning it turned
out it didn't take that long after all. In the process I also corrected a
few stray numbers - what I have above is as accurate as I am going to get
this, though there is plenty of room for error.
I have also calculated two series averages, one for all 21.4 weeks, and one
that includes Week 4 - 22.4. It is my judgment that the second set of
averages is the most valid, since the ratings for the first 3 weeks were so
very high, so atypical, and so unlikely ever to be again approached. NBC had
long established the minimum bar for the JLS as a demo rating of 1.5 (below
that they said the show would not make money). The (typical) average for the
JLS was right at 1.5 (5M total viewers), which is what NBC means when they
say the show performed as expected, and made money for them. However, as I
have been arguing since before the show first aired, that was a low-ball
number that I am certain NBC expected to be able to use to hype how much
Leno was exceeding expectations. I knew this show was in deep trouble when
it was performing so close to that minimum demo rating as soon as October,
and was often finishing at or below the line starting the last week in
October. The same report that first broke the story that NBC was going to
cancel the JLS (initially move it to 11:35) also reported that this move was
sparked not just by reports of the affiliates starting to revolt, but also
by reports from the NBC accountants that the JLS was not profitable for the
network at its current ratings.
After the Week 1 mega-numbers came in (where he averaged about 11.5 M
viewers) I had estimated that Leno would stabilize somewhere around 6.5 - 7
Million viewers per show. After Week 2 I was surprised to have to downgrade
that estimate to 5.5 - 6M viewers - and of course he wound up getting only
5M viewers per night. I think those three numbers capture the story - NBC
was hoping for 6.5 - 7M, they would have survived in the 5.5 - 6M, and
(despite their press releases) they could not survive the 5M (which I
realized after a couple of months corresponded pretty well to a 1.5 demo
rating).
Looking back at my earlier reports I also notice this comment from TV Girl -
posted September 26, 2009, which was at the end of the second week of the
JLS. I post it here because I think it demonstrates the BS in NBC's later PR
line that while Leno did as well as they expected, they had not expected
numbers in that range (5M viewers, 1.5 demo) to cause problems for their
affiliates. Well, TV Girl (and others) did expect it, early on, and even
with better numbers. In response to my prediction that it was starting to
look like Leno would get 5.5 to 6M viewers per show (which turned out to be
half a million to a full million viewers more than he got) she wrote:
***************
" I'm wondering where the affiliates are in all of this. If you're the NBC
affiliate in some mid-level market (no metered market ratings) with a solid
10PM newscast, are you going to be happy being a distant third at 10PM every
night leading into your late local news? What will happen in December when
those November rating books are released and local NBC goes from being #1 or
a close #2 in the mareket to barely beating the "Two and a Half Men" rerun
on the FOX station?"
****************
As we now know (and as NBC should have known) is that would would happen
after those November books came in (not fully distributed and digested until
the end of December) was that the affiliates went into revolt.
In retrospect the best week for the JLS was Week 13 (December 7). It was the
first week he was against significant rerun competition, and his demo rating
of 1.8 was his best since the atypical Week 3. I thought at the time that
might be a sign that Leno really was going to "catch them on the curves"
(well, the rating wasn't good enough to actually catch up to his competition
when they were in reruns, but if he had been able to regularly do that well
against reruns, it probably would have made his overall numbers good enough
to get at least a second year). But the JLS never again had a weekly rating
that high (never did better than 1.6 for any one week), and it became clear
that Week 13 was in large part an anomaly from a monster lead in on that
Tuesday from the Biggest Loser. I think what also happened there is that a
number of viewers did give Leno a second chance that week - they had stopped
watching after the first three weeks to watch regular shows on CBS and ABC,
but when they went into reruns they decided to see how Leno was doing. A lot
of those second-chance viewers did not stay with Leno. This again tells us
something basic about the JLS - it just was not very good.
I have long advocated that NBC should have shrunk the JLS to T-TH. The two
worst nights (as seen in the averages in the table above) were Monday and
Friday, at 1.3. But even Wed finished below 1.5, and Thursday (which
apparently benefited from a pretty good demo for NBC with their sitcom
block) was only just at 1.5. It was really only on Tuesday that the JLS
performed well (average 1.9) and that was a function of a good lead-in. I
think one fundamental problem that I never saw addressed in the media about
the concept of this show is that even the best comedy writing team (and I
don't think Leno has anything like the best comedy writing team in TV) could
not really be expected to generate high quality material in the volumes that
a 5 night a week 60 minute prime-time program demands. I love my Dave, but
even I recognize that he adds a lot of filler to his shows each night (and
he really does have one of the better writing teams in TV). Five prime-time
hours (particularly when the focus is shifting away from celebrity
interviews) requires much more writing time than 5 late night hours, and the
JLS never seemed to come to terms with that fundamental fact. I think they
could have put on better programs if they only had to do 3 instead of 5 each
week. These guys are going to feel like they are on vacation when they go
back to writing for the Tonight Show.
A couple of notes for the record: On nights the JLS was Dark for one reason
or another I calculated weekly averages using Leno's average ratings for
that night (this usually based on the most recent 3 - 5 weeks, and
eventually just based on the nightly averages not counting the first 3
weeks). I got almost all of these numbers from the good people at TV By The
Numbers (http://tvbythenumbers.com/) who post the overnight ratings by 9:00
or 10:00 every morning (but I just collected them every Saturday). They
sometimes posted corrections to these numbers, and I am not always sure if
the numbers I collected were the corrected or non-corrected numbers. In most
cases these variations were fairly negligible, and I think I got most of the
significant variations (usually due to something related to a nationally
televised sporting event). After monitoring their site for 6 months, what I
initially took as a pro-JLS or pro-NBC bias I now think is probably more of
a defense by them of the merits of non-scripted programing (from a ratings
point of view). They now seem to be taking the line that even with the
cancellation of the JLS there will not be that many more net scripted hours
on NBC next season (we shall see).
I had initially imagined that I would watch every JLS for 3 weeks or so, and
then watch it at least 2-3 times per week after that. The truth is I only
watched every episode the first week, watched 2 -3 for a couple of weeks
after that, and have not seen more than 5 episodes total of the show since
November. I have never tried to hide the fact that the Leno persona we got
on the Tonight Show strikes me as positively obnoxious and unwatchable. I
believed the hype that the JLS would be different, and since I have found
Leno to be likable outside of The Tonight Show, I had assumed I would at
least find it watchable enough to monitor pretty regularly. Boy, was I
wrong. If anything, Leno was even more obnoxious in the context of the JLS -
and of course he became downright toxic once the conflict with Conan broke
out in public.
Even though I am not a Leno fan, I was an earlier defender of NBC's Jay Leno
experiment, thinking that it would get at least 6M viewers a night and, in
the short run (meaning a couple of seasons) would stop the bleeding to NBC's
bottom line and make them a small profit. When I started summarizing his
weekly ratings I assumed it would be for a show that was relatively
successful for at least a couple of years. In the long run I always thought
it would a mistake, since I think broadcast networks have to find a couple
of break out hit shows to be successful, and by decreasing the number of
shows they were even trying to make by about 30%, they were really making it
hard on themselves to ever cycle up to being a successful network again. I
was wrong, obviously, the JLS was not even a success in the short term, and
there were lots of people on this list who were right in predicting that
right after NBC first made their announcement in December of 2008. I found
it fascinating to chart the downward curve of the JLS, especially as it
became clear that what NBC was saying in its PR was so discrepant from what
was actually going on.
--
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