Viewers Avoid "Path to 9/11" Fiction

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Three time repeat documentary on CBS nearly draws as many viewers, only 13 million watch "Path"

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After a huge controversy and not-at-all-huge resulting edits, ABC "docu-drama" (aka "fabri-fiction") had a viewership of 13 million, getting drubbed by Sunday Night Football and the brother-on-brother action between Eli and Peyton Manning, which drew 20.7 million viewers. CBS drew 10.6 million viewers for its third airing of its Katie Couric-hosted 9/11 documentary, which did not attempt to pass off invented episodes as actual fact.

Bill Clinton, who along with Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger had certain events attributed to them that did not happen, opted for football, according to Clinton Foundation spokesman Jay Carson. His lawyers did see the film, however, and fired off a strongly-worded letter to Bob Iger dated yesterday saying they were "deeply disappointed" that ABC and Disney aired something that was "fraught with error and contained contrived scenes that are directly contradicted by the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report." (I noted earlier today that, despite the obligatory discliamer before the film, the ABC promotional material was overwhelmingly suggestive it was grounded in fact). Clinton lawyers Bruce Lindsey and Doug Band rebuked Iger for falling shor on his promise to "personally tak[e] the responsibility" for the required edits; instead, the doc " invented its own version of history." Case in point: "There is not enough room here to fully document the fiction in your film." Clinton's lawyer can have the last word here, because they're right:

That the film directly contradicts the findings of the 9/11 Commission is troubling. That it defames dedicated public officials is tragic. But the fact that it misleads millions of people about the most tragic and consequential event in recent history is disgraceful.

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Great game on ESPN MNF football now, Wash and Minn tied at 16 in the 4th quarter, to be followed by Oak-San Diego.

BTW I love this new guy they have, Tony Kornheiser? He doesn't say alot but when he comes in, he brings it articulately.

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Hmmm....the anti-semetic comment form paull has been removed.

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The comment has been made that the ratings were low for "Path" because of the football game broadcast Sunday night.

While the game did present a somewhat unique perspective of two brothers playing against each other, the fact is that Sunday Night football has only just this year been promoted to the networks. It has been on for years, but the audience for it was so small that ESPN carried it instead. Only when the audience for Monday Night Football continually shrank did they pull a switch and make the Sunday Night game the network game and relegate Monday Night Football to the cable network.

In other words, brothers or no brothers, Sunday Night football was never envisioned as any ratings blockbuster-more like an attempt to try to revive a fading primetime night football idea. The idea put forward that this game was such a ratings juggernaut that it swamped "Path" is hilarious-it's more like "Path" had such little appeal that Sunday Night Football got huge ratings.

I think this proves the public is tired of getting 9/11 getting twisted around and shoved down it's throat for political purposes. Everyone is well aware of the significance of what happened on that day-we just can't take any more of having September 11 set up like an altar before which we are obligated to genuflect.

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It won on Monday night, though.

As far as having it 'shoved down our throats' - it was a movie. People could watch or not watch (most chose to watch on Monday night).

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SierraSong wrote:

It won on Monday night, though.

As far as having it 'shoved down our throats' - it was a movie. People could watch or not watch (most chose to watch on Monday night).

ABC won on Monday Night but not with 9/11. ABC won because it's ESPN unit gots best rating ever with its premiere of ESPN Monday Nigth Football drawing statistically the same number of viewers as 9/11. On cable!

9/11 didn't win anything as it spent $40 million to draw the same number of viewers it draws on an average night, 12 million. This for the most ballyhooed TV event in some time, according to a2k's timberlandko.

ABC faced virtually no competetion from the networks as viewers turned to various choces on cable because of the lack of watchable network fare.

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Path" averaged 12 million viewers and a 3.8 rating/10 share in the adults 18-49 demographic according to Nielsen estimates. It's tough to know exactly because of time-period estimates and the impact of the president's speech.

At 10:20 p.m., ABC's "Primetime" special delivered roughly 11 million viewers and about a 3.7/10. This "Primetime" originated from the site of the World Trade Center and was anchored by Charles Gibson.

Fox remained in the ratings game with a new episode of "Prison Break," which averaged 8.8 million viewers and a 3.7/10 in the demo, about on par with last week. But a new week wasn't as kind to "Vanished," which dropped to 5.9 million viewers and a 2.0/5 for its airing from 9:18 p.m. to 10:20 p.m. ET.

Nightly averages: ABC (11.9 million, 3.7/10); CBS (7.2 million, 2.3/6); Fox (6.6 million, 2.5/6); NBC (5.6 million, 1.8/5); and The WB (1.6 million, 0.6/2).

source

While ESPN notched it's best ratings night ever! Keep in mind too that the Vikings and Redskins are not marquee NFL teams.

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ESPN posts its best ratings ever

Tribune wires

September 13, 2006

NEW YORK -- ESPN's first regular-season Monday night NFL game under the new contract drew the cable network's biggest audience ever.

The game between the Minnesota Vikings and Washington Redskins, won 19-16 by Minnesota, drew a 9.9 rating, representing an average of between nearly 9.2 million and 12.57 million households, the network said.

The previous record was 8.9 million households on Christmas Day 2004 for a game between Detroit and Miami.

Source

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"Path" had fewer viewers on Monday night than it did on Sunday night! 13 million on Sunday night, 12 million on Monday night.

It probably would have bombed even worse if there was any competition from the other broadcast networks.

Here is what "Path to 9/11" was up against on Monday night:

NBC: Dateline-interviews with the loved ones of the passengers who died in the 9/11 crash over Pennsylvania. In other words, more 9/11 viewing.

Fox: Prison Break. New episode. Ratings the same as last week. "Vanished" had lower ratings, but few people know this show is even on the air.

CBS:
Repeat of "How I Met Your Mother"
Repeat of "The New Adventures of Christine"
Repeat of "Two And A Half Men"-from 2003.
Repeat of "CSI Miami"

And the number of viewers for "Path" went DOWN against that competition!

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ABC's '9/11' gives ABC win Monday

If the Hollywood Reporter is wrong, someone (Roxxxanne?) should tell them.

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That wouldn't support the Left's obsession with condemning any point of view that casts doubt on their major premises; Republicans are all wealthy conservatives who manipulate the American public for their own ends, and that those ends are the destruction of our form of government. The only people in the country concerned with liberty, justice and humanity are those in the Democratic Party, all of whom are paragons of virtue. Hillary was never a Fellow-Traveler, and Teddy is perhaps a greater hero than his older brothers. President Clinton must be seen as one of the greatest and most brilliant of all the Presidents, but he was driven from office by a wicked and jealous Republican Party. Oh well ............

Now Michael Moore's documentary was entirely factual and clearly demonstrated that the Bush Administration was and is a captive of the Saudi Royal Family. Because Moore concluded that Bush harbored a great hatred for Saddam, he gleefully grabbed the first opportunity to attack and destroy as many innocent Iraqi's as possible. No one was allowed to criticize Moore's libels, but this is different.

Some Clinton Administration figures don't fare very well, and all of the Bush Administration warts shown in the Path to 9/11 are just the plain truth and confirms all the accusations that the Democrats have been making since before they and Gore lost the election to Bush. That's different, and so this mini-series certainly must be just another part of the vast Republican conspiracy to mislead the public into approving the coming Nuclear World War. Yeah, sure.

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Republicans are all wealthy conservatives who manipulate the American public for their own ends, and that those ends are the destruction of our form of government.

No, not all of them, just the ones at the top running the show for the Republican party these days.

Wait a minute, that's not right, either; those running the Republican party certainly are not conservative any longer, but instead are primarily Authoritarian.

Cycloptichorn

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Asherman wrote:

That wouldn't support the Left's obsession with condemning any point of view that casts doubt on their major premises......

.......Some Clinton Administration figures don't fare very well, and all of the Bush Administration warts shown in the Path to 9/11 are just the plain truth and confirms all the accusations that the Democrats have been making since before they and Gore lost the election to Bush.

Baloney. The Bush Administration officials were certainly free to claim that some scenes were fabricated if they chose-none chose to. That is probably because there were no fabricated scenes as regards Bush officials.

When a Clinton Administration official is shown to not give the order to capture bin Laden and it turns out that no such situation ever existed, let alone order given, that is pretty bad-these people have the right to complain.

It should be noted that Director Cunningham has connections to an organization trying to put evangelicals into filmmaking, and the screenwriter is a personal friend of Rush Limbaugh.

Even more to the point, the show was released for pre-screening to almost exclusively right wing sources, who spent several weeks building it up. Gee, what a surprise that Bush Administration officials found nothing to complain about.

The whole thing was a partisan hack job.

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SierraSong wrote:

ABC's '9/11' gives ABC win Monday

If the Hollywood Reporter is wrong, someone (Roxxxanne?) should tell them.

Sunday night "Path" was utterly clobbered. It "won" Monday because it's network competition on Monday was:

A) Reruns of old sitcoms

B) A primetime news show devoted to interviews of the loved ones lost on one of the 9/11 airliners

C) A new episode of a show ranked 55th last year.

"Path" won Monday only because of the unbelievably weak competition on the other networks.

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With its 2nd on Sunday (13 Million viewers) and its 1st on Monday (12 Million viewers), Path scored over a third of the viewership two nights running. No programmer or ad exec I can think of would be likely to characterize a performance on that order as "getting clobbered".

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Of course not, Timber. Those guys are stictly bean counters, and they have the numbers to show that this mini-series was watched by a whole lot of people. The only people, it seems who are upset are the anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-conservative diehards, and those who never met a conspiracy theory they didn't fully believe to be true ... so long as the source is anti-American.

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Asherman wrote:

.....they have the numbers to show that this mini-series was watched by a whole lot of people......

The lowest rated show on TV is watched by a whole lot of people. There are 300 million people in the country. Fact is, the numbers clearly show that for a $40 million dollar extravaganza spread over two nights, it was a flop.

Asherman wrote:

The only people, it seems who are upset are the anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-conservative diehards, and those who never met a conspiracy theory they didn't fully believe to be true ... so long as the source is anti-American.

Oh, so now it's anti-American to point out that entire scenes from a show which purports to depict an actual event were entirely made up? According to you, the American thing to do is to go along with the lie?

It's astonishing how twisted around the right wingers are getting trying to defend their faltering positions.

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kelticwizard wrote:

Asherman wrote:
.....they have the numbers to show that this mini-series was watched by a whole lot of people......

The lowest rated show on TV is watched by a whole lot of people. There are 300 million people in the country. Fact is, the numbers clearly show that for a $40 million dollar extravaganza spread over two nights, it was a flop.

Apparently, your understanding of TV marketing is faulty.

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Asherman wrote:
The only people, it seems who are upset are the anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-conservative diehards, and those who never met a conspiracy theory they didn't fully believe to be true ... so long as the source is anti-American.

Oh, so now it's anti-American to point out that entire scenes from a show which purports to depict an actual event were entirely made up? According to you, the American thing to do is to go along with the lie?

It's astonishing how twisted around the right wingers are getting trying to defend their faltering positions.

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timberlandko wrote:

With its 2nd on Sunday (13 Million viewers) and its 1st on Monday (12 Million viewers), Path scored over a third of the viewership two nights running. No programmer or ad exec I can think of would be likely to characterize a performance on that order as "getting clobbered".

On sunday night, ABC's $40 million extravaganza got clobbered by Sunday Night Football, a series so lacking in ratings promise that for many years it was carried only on cable. The football game audience was over 60% greater than the audience for the much ballyhooed "Path". That's awful performance, considering the cost.

As for Monday night, please note that your very own quote states that the night Path "won", it had FEWER viewers than the night it got clobbered. So much for ABC's "blockbuster".

On sunday, against good competition, "Path" got steamrolled. On Monday night, it ran against
A) Reruns of sitcoms from 2003
B) A new episode of the 55th ranked show last season
C) Interviews with the families of the people who died on one of the airliners-a show of limited appeal, to say the least.

Only against that competition did ABC get a "win".

One thing which must be taken into account. The new fall season starts next week. ABC has been pushing "Path" furiously for weeks, showing commercial after commercial for it. That time could have been used to promote the new shows in ABC's new fall lineup-there is only so much promotion time available. How many new ABC shows will fail because so much promotion time in primetime was used up to push "Path", a ratings turkey?

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Now, there's spin, anguish and desperation for ya.

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Clearly, to anyone who understands the TEEVEE bidness, and that includes myself as i have spent 14 years of my life in it, ESPN won Monday night. What part of best alltime rating ever is hard to understand?

In fact, if there is any joy today over at Disney, it is over the ESPN alltime rating high and the fact that the Path controversy is (hopefully) dying down.

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Viewers Avoid "Path to 9/11" Fiction

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