(click to enlarge)
(click on chart to enlarge)
Update 8/7 2:20PDT: or maybe not a $30+ CPM. There are many different ways to slice and dice the numbers. The first chart (at the very top) shows # of households viewing and calculated CPM based on households. The second chart shows viewers (more than 1 per/household) and recalculates the CPM based on viewers. We at the yet-to-be launched tvbythenumbers.com are trying to figure out why ad buyers would care about anything other than # of viewers -- and are not sure that is not the case. We hope to standardize on one, useful and helpful metric and remove a lot of confusion that comes from throwing around a lot of different metrics for more or less the same thing (ratings, households, viewer).
From Variety:
For the first time ever, a Spanish-language show has topped the New York area ratings for the 11PM Saturday news slot. In July, "Noticias Univision 41" on Univision 41 (WXTV) came out at number one in all three key demographics.
From: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969725.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&nid=2562
Big, and getting bigger
TVbytheNumbers is still over a month off, but here's an update to change from ratings to actual viewers and to include the 2007 data. (click on the chart to enlarge).
I pulled a semi all nighter last night and after a few hours of trying to learn how to do tables efficiently in CSS and writing a blog entry on Nielsen//Netratings new measurements (that will hopefully be published somewhere else) I wound up starving at 3am and needing food. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep so I headed to IHOP with my iPhone.
I'm sitting there eating my eggs and watching 24 on the iPhone when at about 3:30 I get a beep in my ears that I have an e-mail. It was from Mark Cuban -- who I believe was probably on the east coast and up early. He was responding to an e-mail I'd sent him based on his blog entry about HDNet & HDNet Movies leading in the High Definition ratings according to TNS Media Research.
There wasn't actually any numeric data in the release and the way I read it was unclear to me what it really meant. It indicated the combined HDNets were the ratings leader both in HD-Exclusive networks and broadcast/cable HD simulcasts. So I wrote to Cuban and asked if when Fox ran it's MLB game on Saturday if the combined HDNet/HDNet Movies had more eyeballs than were on the HD version of FOX's MLB broadcast.
This is a case where I believe even when I'm a "focus group of 1", I'm representative. Sports is something that really is enhanced by HD, and so if HDNet beat out the MLB Game of the week in HD, I would have found it astonishing.
Cuban e-mailed to say, no, HDNets didn't have more eyeballs than the MLB game in HD on Fox, but that on average for the day, HDNets averaged more viewers than Fox HD (and all other HD).
I'm happy for HDNet, and I think it is a nice achievement that I would likewise trumpet if I were running an HD tv network. But I'm not and am more into head-to-head comparisons with real numbers. I think eventually there will be some publicly available data that's sliced like that, but we're not there yet.
In the meanwhile, being in IHOP (or maybe they will change it to iHOP) at 3:30 a.m. watching TV on my iPhone and getting e-mail from Mark Cuban -- it made me smile.
Mark Cuban hypothesizes on the value of concentrated eyeballs on a video stream. He doesn’t remember why he was reminded of Metcalf’s Law, but I do, he brought it up in an exchange we had a few weeks ago regarding the perception that the more people watching at the same time, the more valuable the content is. Cuban hoped to generate thinking and discussion with his blog entry, so here is my “thinking out loud” on the subject.
I agree with Cuban’s hypotheses in his blog entry for the most part, but I am in “simple man asking simple questions” mode when it comes to my examination of the TV space, and so far my thinking boils down to:
The value is to both the producers of the content stream and the broadcasters of the stream(s). How is this value determined?
1. How much people are willing to pay for the content
2. How much companies are willing to spend on advertising
3. a combination of both
One assumption I have not validated is that for the most part in cases like ESPN, people don’t realize they are paying for it specifically. Oh sure, they know they pay for cable, but they don’t associate the fees with “buying the content” until you hit the realm of HBO, PPV, MLB Extra Innings, etc.
For purposes of forward looking thinking, at some point in the future I don’t think the opportunity will exist in the scale it currently does to monetize content via physical media (DVD, etc) distribution. I don’t see the revenue from that drying up completely, but I think for the most part how people will buy content in the future will change and I’m guessing how content is purchased/received/accessed will change dramatically. I believe every single one of those changes (some which are already in progress) will come at the expense of the # of people with eyes on the stream at the same time.
As Cuban himself pointed out to me, the number one show in 2007, American Idol wouldn’t have cracked the top 20 in 1987. More people watched Monday Night Football , the #20 show in 1987, then watched American Idol, the #1 show in 2007. I don’t have the data available, but I’d bet $1000 without the data that the cost for a 30 second spot on American Idol in 2007 was higher (adjusted for inflation, etc) than 30 seconds on 60 Minutes in 1987. If this is correct, 1/3rd of the audience 20 years later has more “value” than three times as many eyeballs in 1987.
This my friends seems to be the new math. Why?
My working theory is : advertisers have no real idea how to value their advertising, but they believe what Cuban is preaching. American Idol may have 1/3rd the eyeballs of 1987’s top show, but it’s the biggest “all eyes on at once” show, and the advertisers do value the concentrated viewership regardless of any real ability to quantify (or even qualify) what the value of this actually is in pure dollars and cents. The thinking seems to be more is better, and “fear” comes into play. Fear of looking stupid, fear of missing opportunity, fear that NOT paying to have more eyeballs at once will impact sales (even though I can find no actual data that would seem to justify such a fear).
What results is the buyers of television advertising and the sellers of the space seem to form one of the most inefficient markets ever, with no real basis for determining “valuations”.
Can it continue? If the top show in 2027 has 1/3rd the eyeballs of American Idol – will the price (relative to inflation) go up, stay the same or go down?
What happens when even 50% of the people are watching 50% of their content via time shifted DVR viewing?
And in the future, won’t I actually be able to get more for less? Is it possible I’ll be able to subscribe to the major broadcast networks, HBO, TNT, all of ESPN’s channels, USA, SciFi, whatever the local cable sports channels are, all in HD and with some kind of “virtual” DVR/On Demand (anything on the channels I’ve subscribed to me is available for X time after it initially airs) and pay significantly less than the channels I have today?
Is there anything prohibiting someone from trying to cut these deals now? In the case of the subscription the individual channels (ESPN, TNT, the local sports channel) would likely get a bigger cut than in the current arrangement with the Cable & Satellite distributors, and honestly, I don’t care about almost ALL of the channels on my package. I’d be better off paying for specific content on a pay per view basis than subsidizing a whole boatload of content I almost never watch on a monthly basis.
I believe these services will certainly come and fragment the concentration of “people viewing the same content at the same time” even further. But it’s a fairer market for the buyers of content.
(click to enlarge)i ran my Google analytics and saw a little traffic in Sunnyvale and because Feedburner provides ip addresses I got curious. And damn if you can't run NSLOOKUP from a DOS command line just like you could in the 1990s. Yahoo! I'm guessing a little tiny mention from Kara Swisher goes a long way. But as long as you're here...
Google won. Really. The whole thing. However...
I'm thinking about this like I am thinking about the TV business. Did you know that in about the last 11 years (1995-2006) the combined "share" during primetime for CBS, NBC, ABC has decreased by a full 2/3rds? That's right, there are about as as many eyeballs on ABC, CBS, NBC combined now as each used to have. But guess what: ABC, CBS and NBC are worth MORE today than they were 12 years ago (even adjusting for inflation and whatnot).
So even though Google won, it's not over for Yahoo. Not by a long shot. Good luck!
Can MLB/FOX make it two consecutive years of ratings increases?
I doubt it. The phrase "Lowest rated ____ in history" is going to continue its trend. These lines are all down for everything but the Super Bowl and NASCAR.
But this year is special. Controversy...building, mounting, controversy. It will build faster if Barry hits a few more homeruns. At his current pace he won't break the record before July 10, but stranger things have happend. Either way, the Bud vs. Barry controversy is brewing.
Will this controversy be good for MLB ratings? Perhaps. If the downward trend continues though, no doubt it will be blamed (rightly or wrongly) on the impurity of the game and dislike of Bonds. Looking at the overall trendline I would conclude if the ratings go up measurably vs last year, Barry ought to get some credit for that (even if they just tuned in to hate him). If the ratings go down, I'd attribute it to the trend. Bill Plaschke (who I do enjoy, but who like anyone else can be a dope sometimes) will blame it on Barry.
I'll probably repost this chart again in a few weeks, but you people in the know enjoy getting in on things before the hoi polloi.
P.S. TV by the Numbers is coming Fall '07.
World Series Telvision Ratings Breakdown
hint: if you charted it, it over the last 20 years it would look a lot like the NBA and NHL.
Not just because I'm a chronic suck up at all. Moonves really is #1 in the thing networks care MOST about: primetime ratings. We live in a world where you can really make a boneheaded decision and totally undervalue the worth of the Dan Rather brand and still be…#1. Les Moonves lives in exactly that world. A world where America LOVES, LOVES, LOVES CSI. That America isn't loving on Miss Couric on the CBS Evening News – this I believe isn't Miss Couric's fault at all, but instead just how the whole transition from Rather to Couric was handled (which is to say, very, very badly). Again, I don't think that's a really function of anything to do with Katie Couric. It doesn't matter. Primetime ratings matter. And here, Moonves or at least CSI in all its variations are killing. While CBS didn't have any of the top 5 programs, either for the season or the May sweeps, CBS still dominated with 13 out of the top 20 shows being CBS products and EIGHTEEN OUT OF THE TOP TWENTY-FIVE shows in the May sweeps. That's dominance. The highest value to the networks come from its ability to score during primetime, so Moonves probably views himself (and correctly so) as the winner. I wouldn't fault him for that. Except I have no idea what role Moonves had in CSI and its variants or any of the other programming running during primetime. If those decisions were his, I'll give him all the credit for it (and even if they weren't his, I'll give him the credit). What I am sure of is, the Dan Rather/Katie Couric thing was all his, and it was completely botched: not just in execution, but in terms of how he thought about it to begin with. The fact that CBS is #1 during primetime has no bearing on how poorly this was handled, except that I'm sure that Moonves is not under any kind of pressure, say…compared to NBC, which came in last in the primetime sweeps. Les Moonves is #1 in the thing that really matters, the primetime ratings. But if the goal is to make the most money for your firm possible, and if it isn't, I kind of think it should be, I hold Moonves completely accountable for botching the Rather thing. Because he's #1 where it matters he won't feel any heat for being accountable here. That's human nature, but it's the kind of human nature that usually eventually comes around to bite you in the butt.
Things are not always what they seem. I saw record low Nielsen Ratings for the (Stanley Cup) and wondered why my pal Ted Leonsis wasn’t selling the Washington Capitals as fast as he possibly could. On the surface, my approach made a lot of sense. But TV is a place where things aren’t always exactly what they seem, and indeed in the case of Ted Leonsis and the Washington Capitals and the NHL, I was very wrong.
Thankfully I had that all sorted out and didn’t wind up needing to binge on any kind of e-mail exchange with Mark Cuban where I was freaked out looking at the Nielsen Ratings for the NBA Finals and saying, “Oh my God, you’re as crazy as Leonsis!” It’s a good thing too, because I don’t think Mark would have gone nearly as easy on me as Ted did!
Fortunately I do have a gift for self-correction. I can learn.
One thing I am trying to learn is what’s really going on in the television business. I mean what’s really going on. The television industry itself faces the exact same challenges as the major sports franchises. Television bumps up against the same real limits. And there is definitely one real limit: that’s the amount of available free time. You can check out some of this data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bad news is, there’s definitely not unlimited free time. The good news is, as of last summer, TV still won the highest concentration of free time (about 2.6 hours per day). And as you know, on any given night there is way more than 2.6 hours of programming available. All of the programming is fighting for the same free time.
I watched the Dan vs. Katie/Cuban vs. Moonves frenzy the other day and it definitely got me thinking that I was missing something. Something was not right about the whole thing in my mind, but I couldn’t figure out why.
Then, in a somewhat unrelated bit of curiosity, I was looking at the Brand Keys “Sports Loyalty Engagement” (more or less a measure of which sports franchises have the highest loyalty from their fans) and saw all the other “brand loyalty engagement” studies Brand Keys does, including this (rank of evening news by loyalty in 2007):
Evening News Shows
ABC
NBC
FOX
CNN
CBS
MSNBC
Then I understood the something I had missed in this whole thing. The short version of that thinking is, “Ouch, Moonves is dope!” The truth of it is, here he was a complete and total dope. He’ll never admit it. You won’t likely hear the Les Moonves, “Mistakes were made…” speech. But one very, very, very big mistake was made.
First, it is true that the program “brands” do have some loyalty and you can measure it. That’s true for both the Today Show and the CBS Evening News. There is data that I am missing and this data would be helpful. But there is data that I am not missing, and that’s the actual results (which are not good). I like to focus on results. Also, I wanted to start thinking about this in these terms: “What would I do if I ran a television network?”
There’s a secondary truth as well: the stars themselves have some “loyalty engagement index”. Which shows have the most loyalty and which stars have the most loyalty very often crossover. The data I am missing is the crossover between people who are loyal to both Katie Couric and Dan Rather, and people who are loyal to both morning AND evening news programming. Based on the actual results, and admittedly this is still pretty speculative there wasn’t all that much crossover.
Moonves made a key mistake, I believe. The evening news market was already in a free fall (and that trend will NOT change), the mistake Moonves probably made was that he thought he could change this trend. Given that mistake, I do understand how he made the second and big mistake. Let me be clear: when you have a brand, and the sky is kind of falling (ratings across all evening news viewers combined are down more than 50% over the last 25 years) but there is still value in the brand to be milked out of it – you milk it as long as you can. Creating a “new brand” in the environment of Network evening news is as complicated as launching a new beer brand. Beverage companies spend years with rollouts of new brands and the main reason (in my opinion) the rollouts of “new beer” are handled as slowly as they are is because they don’t want the success of the new brand to come at the expense of any existing brand.
There was an existing brand at CBS News. The brand to be exact, was “The CBS News with DAN RATHER”. Dan Rather actually was the brand and I think in a shrinking market where you have a fairly good brand – killing that brand off and trying to launch a new one is just…absolutely insane. This has nothing to do with Katie Couric. I do not believe there was anyone CBS could have put on aside from perhaps bringing Walter Cronkite back that would draw MORE viewers than Dan Rather. Because Dan Rather was the brand and getting rid of him pushed out the millions of people who were loyal Dan Rather evening news fans.
Katie Couric had loyal fans too – but that was for something else. So one lesson here is that brand loyalty does not (certainly in Network television) cross over from morning shows on one network, to evening news shows on the other.
As a result of the way Moonves went about this – again probably a result of thinking he could change the overall trend, one very, very critical mistake was made. Moonves thought about CBS News as the brand. It wasn’t. Dan Rather was the brand and in this case Moonves completely underestimated the value of the Rather brand.
I really don’t find it surprising that without ever thinking about any of this I hadn’t figured it out. What’s vastly more surprising to me is Mooves didn’t figure it out either. There are studies on brand loyalty by the stars themselves. I would not be shocked at all to find out that programming decisions for smaller networks, whether it be USA or Mark Cuban’s own HDNet are being made by trying to create programming around stars with high brand loyalty that happen to be out of work.
I also won’t be surprised that when it comes to network television, that no matter how steep the trend line down is, that the egos like Moonves will think they can reverse the trend, fire more stars with high brand value and…how long can it really be before Dan Rather and Katie Couric are hosting together a nightly news show on Cuban’s own HDNet?
I’ve got Mark Cuban.
After a spirited email exchange with about 25 volleys, Mr. Leonsis did convince me not to overvalue the Nielsen Ratings for sporting events when it came to trying to correlate that to anything(other than the number of people who tuned in).
Then he gave me a book recommendation: The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Market Place. He told me he thought that was the kind of stuff I ought to be writing about.
By page 20, I was inclined to agree with him. The book combines so many things I love:
· Capitalism
· Psychology
· Sociology
· Philosophy
· Research/Science
· Fun with Numbers (data)
· and SPORTS!
While the Nielsen Ratings for NHL games are definitely bleak relative to NFL, MLB and NBA, what’s happening with the NHL is all part of a bigger trend. It may look worse for the NHL ratings wise (at least in terms of the Stanley Cup), but it’s all part of the same overall trend. All kinds of entertainment and “free-time” choices are available, and many of them don’t involve the television at all. The free-time itself is in limited supply.
The NBA, and MLB have certainly seen ratings declines. NBA Finals with scores like 75-72 aren’t helping with the ratings. We like scoring, just like we like home runs (I won’t go off into the steroids rant here) we want to see Lebron score 50 points and even if they lost 127-112, we’d like that better. 75-72 isn’t attractive to the casual fan.
The NFL faces the same challenges. The Super Bowl will probably remain golden for a long, long time though. It’s just a hunch, but the Super Bowl – that’s not about “football”. That’s about a national holiday to have an excuse to get drunk and have a party on a Sunday. It’s St. Patrick’s Day, only better because there’s gambling, square pools, etc. We’re not giving that up any sooner than we’re giving up St. Patrick’s Day.
But here’s the thing. My brain couldn’t really process it at first because it seems so counter intuitive to me. The NFL, NBA, MLB and the NHL will continue to experience lower ratings vs. the glory days, and mostly, the ratings aren’t going to come back. I know the NFL will try to squeeze out Brady vs. Manning in primetime wherever it can and it has the challenge of making more of its personalities interesting to the public in ways that don’t involve arrests for possessing 6,000 semi-automatic weapons.
Yesterday I said Tagliabue was a genius for getting out when he did, and that poor sap Roger Goodell was about to not know what hit him. I didn’t really mean that. They say do what you love, and you can’t go wrong, and sometimes I just love being a jackass. I said that the % of the Cincinnati Bengals arrested would be the least of his worries.
In truth, I believe Goodell’s focus is correct. Specifically because at a time when your fan base is bound to erode somewhat no matter what you do – and it will because “free-time” is limited, but the number of choices we have to fill the free-time keeps growing and growing – you absolutely do not want to have your players modeling behavior that risks alienating a fan base that was already bound to erode. It’s like pushing them out the door. I like his focus. And I like that Pacman “make it rain” Jones will not be suiting up for a single game this year.
But here’s the thing that’s counterintuitive. Despite the eroding fan bases and television ratings, the actual value and health of these leagues can continue to grow anyway, provided it’s managed well.
While even the NFL can’t escape the fan erosion, they of ALL the leagues are best positioned to really rake it in despite the erosion. Managed well, the MLB, NBA and NHL (yes, the NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE – there, I said it) can all do the same, albeit on a smaller scale. It was true 20 years ago and it is still true today. Even with record low ratings.
As for “record low Nielsen ratings” – breathe it in! We’re in a trend to hear that phrase applied to many things. Not just NHL, or NBA finals – it’s already hit the evening news. Katie Couric is taking the heat for that, but really, it’s all part of the same game – limited free time, more choices, more record low ratings. For just about everything really.
But for now and the foreseeable future, television will be a very powerful medium, but with fewer and fewer things that have the capability to bring in massive # of people. That makes the NFL worth…more than it has ever been. Even with eroding ratings. I am not worried about Roger Goodell, and he is no poor sap.
I predict a follow up to the book The Elusive Fan. It will be: The Elusive Viewer: Reinventing Television in a Crowded Marketplace. The beauty of it is, they could just do a find and replace to randomly replace all the “sports” terms with television terms and as is – this book would be more valuable to TV executives than anything they’re reading in Variety. Or, they could just read it as is.
I'm sure my boy Ted Leonsis is having a chuckle over this:
Lowest rated NBA Finals Game 1 in history .
MJ is going to get some kind of, "Please man, please, c'mon!" call from David Stern
And not the pressure to win the championship -- although I am sure he puts a lot of personal pressure on himself to win.
For all my talk about the NHL ratings (and again, I've completely swung to thinking current value/health of the league does NOT correlate to the National ratings of the Stanley Cup games), I think the ratings for the upcoming NBA finals will be very interesting. Because of Lebron my guess is the finals will crack averaging over 10 Million homes for the first time since 2004 when Detroit vs. the Lakers pulled an 11.5 average Nielsen Rating and was on in ~12.5 million homes.
What I'm most interested in is to see whether Lebron can outdo that performance by Kobe/Shaq of a few years back.
The relative comparison are of course completely meaningless (comparing NHL to NBA, for example). While my linear brain does want to make such comparisons -- crap like if the value of an NHL franchise is X, the value of the Boston Red Sox must be 25X!
But that really is just a bunch of stupid crap. In the real world it doesn't work that way. In the real world, quite often, as my brother likes to say, the tiniest studio apartment in the most luxurious building will have a higher price per sq. foot than the bigger, "nicer" units. You can't look at the unit that is 4x as big and say it should be worth 4x...because that's not actually how it really works. Not for condos, not for the NBA, not for the NHL.
My mind tried to process it that way anyway, but I'm over it.
...and Nielsen will try to make both the advertisers AND the networks happy. They will not succeed. Why? Because it's obvious: the Networks had the upper hand and now they don't.
Check out this story from Advertising Age, in the face of the actual viewership data for the commercials themselves, what did the Networks focus on? Getting every sliver of a dollar for the DVR audience that might still watch the advertisements. This seems to imply that the networks didn't like the actual data at all and are searching for a way to stick with the old model.
I don't see them (the networks) getting away with that for long, if at all and I see this as a sign that Mark Cuban was more right than he knew. The leverage isn't moving in favor of the advertisers, I think it must have already moved. The advertisers have the upper hand now.
I note that Nielsen has shared still ZERO data with the general public on the ad ratings themselves (Nielsen too only focused on DVR viewership in their press release, which seems to indicate Nielsen sides with the Networks...Nielsen shouldn't have a side here).
All this noise without any data in the public...strikes me that the commercial ratings themselves may be worse than anyone wants to talk about. The DVR thing is merely a distraction until we see the real data for the commercials themselves. I can't help but feeling if it was "OH MY, PEOPLE LOVE COMMERCIALS! LOVE THEM!" we would have seen some data already. We didn't. That's bad news for the networks and good news for the advertisers.
My brother says that in business/negotiations, “he who cares the most usually loses.” Under this theory I thought I could probably win an argument with Ted Leonsis about the NHL because I figured as the owner of the Washington Capitals NHL franchise (and he is a minority owner of the Washington Wizards NBA franchise as well) he is bound to care more than me. I felt like I was in a good position.
But I do not have my sea legs yet, and came out of the communication exchange feeling a little bit worn down and in need of a glass of wine. I give Ted many points for stamina. I also give him a tremendous amount of credit for making himself so accessible to the NHL fan-base (and everyone else, for that matter). I think guys like Leonsis and Cuban making themselves so accessible IS one of the most outstanding aspects of the internet. It’s possible to get guys like this engaged in very interesting conversations. Extremely engaged at times. So I will tip my hat to Ted on that, it’s a great thing.
In fact that’s the reason that I wrote him. I really think the NHL has a great opportunity because while it has lost 50% of its viewers for the Stanley Cup finals in the last 5 years, they were there as recently as 5 years ago. I do worry that more people read Ted’s blog in one month than watched the NHL finals and while that’s great for Ted, I don’t see it as so good for the NHL.
From my perceptive if you had three million homes tuned in 5 years ago and less than half that many are tuned in now, your prospects are worse now than they were before, not better. However…
The world is a wacky place and linear math like that doesn’t always work. As Leonsis himself notes there are now 2000 billionaires. That’s about 10 times as many billionaires as there are sports franchises worth buying. Because of the concentration of capital and the limited supply of sports franchises, we do live in a crazy world where because of the “limited amount of real-estate” property values are going up, up, up, even in cases where the neighborhood is having severe problems (losing half your viewers is a bad day in the neighborhood).
Leonsis points out that from a financial perspective the league is in much better shape now because although ratings were down 50% in 2006 from the 2002 numbers, the league actually broke even in 2006 and lost a significant chunk of change in 2002 when the ratings were much better.
Despite escalation of the underlying value regardless of performance (because of the 2000 billionaires and limited # of franchises), at some point performance still matters. While I agree that breaking even is better than losing money – and I do see that as both an improvement to the business model and improved financial performance, I still am not quite comfortable with the prospects, but I’m focusing on just the problem of the national ratings. Leonsis notes there have been positive improvements and that ticket revenues and actual attendance are both up, as were local ratings for regular season broadcasts.
Despite these improvements, Leonsis agrees that the national ratings remain a big issue. Current deals that have some of the finals on the Versus network really limit exposure (availability to only about 20M of the 100+M tv universe) and hampers both ratings and cross-promotional opportunities.
Though I confess Ted’s explanations do leave me feeling less panicked, I can’t see how the prospects of a league that 1.5 million homes tune in to the finals are truly better than the prospects of something with twice as many homes tuned in. Also, it seems to me that since those folks were watching as recently as 5 years ago, they’re the first people I would focus on winning back. I believe Ted has an opportunity compared to other figures in the NHL because he is out there in the popular culture with a link to his blog from Engadget and everything.
Other than the stars of the NHL themselves doing everything in their power to get face time with the American public (with the leagues assistance), Ted should somehow use his position to do his part to get the 50% back simply because he’s in a better position than most affiliated with the league to have an impact with that.
Is the NHL “really” in better shape now? Ted thinks so, but I’m still not there yet and this year’s ratings (Saturday’s game 3 did a .8 rating with a 2 share during its highest ½ hourly period on Saturday night) of less than a million homes even when the game was on NBC during primetime is not leaving me feel like the NHL is *really* in better shape, even if the franchise values are increasing and the financial performance is better than it was 5 years ago when the average rating was about 3x Saturday night’s results.
I know Paris is in jail, but maybe that’s the best time to approach her with some sort of deal to save the NHL. One thing I think Leonsis is in a better position than most involved with the NHL is really helping put a focus on how to effectively market the stars of the NHL, in fact, I believe marketing its stars is the only way to win back viewers. I see Leonsis as a very determined guy, and if he was determined, really determined to help the NHL market its stars, I think he’d succeed with it.
Ted, It seems like comments aren't working at ted.aol.com the last few days and I wanted to take a moment to respond to: Hardest Thing to Do in Business. I like that you're a man of the people, both for the Washington, DC area and your NHL Franchise. But I think I'd encourage you to change your focus from championships to improving the abysmal television ratings for the NHL. I know I am always harping on YOU to do this, and I'll tell you why. It's because you probably have a higher Q-rating than any of your stars, including Alex O. Does Alex O have a link to his Web site from the Engadget Blog? No. But Ted Leonsis does. You sir, are more in the pop culture than the NHL. It wouldn't shock me (at all) to find more households read your blog in a month than watched any of the Stanley Cup finals. For the NHL, I fear the hardest thing to do may be to stay in business. You know the ratings lines, you have seen these #'s (courtesy of Nielsen Media): 2006 * **NBC/OLN 7 1.8 3 1,994,000 2,834,000 Carolina vs, 2002 ABC 3 3.6 7 3,815,000 5,768,000 Detroit Red Wings vs. Atlanta Thrashers In four years, the NHL lost half its households and viewers. HALF. In only 4 years. This year's #'s seem to be WORSE so far. Hockey isn't in the popular culture and as nice as ted.aol.com is, it did absolutely nothing to improve NHL television ratings. I'd encourage you to think about this: "why not". My best guess is: "that wasn't really what Ted was going for here," to which I must also ask, "why not?" Sincerely, Robert Seidman
Edmonton
