Viewers Avoid "Path to 9/11" Fiction

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 they didn't!

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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.

The Hollywood Reporter is wrong. ESPN won Monday night, setting an alltime record.

ESPN MNF draws second largest cable audience of any program in history

'MNF' Sets Ratings Record for ESPN
Game draws network's biggest-ever audience

September 12 2006
'Monday Night Football' announcers Tony Kornheiser, Mike Tirico and Joe Theismann
'Monday Night Football' announcers Tony Kornheiser, Mike Tirico and Joe Theismann
The debut of "Monday Night Football" on cable didn't draw quite as big an audience as it used to on over-the-air TV, but ESPN is hardly upset with its ratings.

The long-running franchise more than survived its move to cable, drawing ESPN's largest-ever audience for the first of two games Monday night. The network says the game between the Washington Redskins and Minnesota Vikings averaged 12.57 million viewers, making it the most-watched telecast on cable in 2006.

Another 10.5 million stayed up to watch the second game between the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders, which didn't start until 10:15 p.m. ET.

"'Monday Night Football' is a clear winner for ESPN," says George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports. "We're thrilled that fans enjoyed our new day-long, multimedia approach to this storied franchise. To average more than 10 million viewers for each game demonstrates the power of 'Monday Night Football' and ESPN."

Measuring by households, the 9.177 million homes that tuned into the first game Monday is the second-most in cable history. (The all-time leader, believe it or not, is CNN's November 1993 telecast of a NAFTA debate between Al Gore and Ross Perot.)

In contrast, last year's season opener on ESPN (which then had the Sunday-night franchise) drew 11.25 million viewers. For the 2005 season, the network's Sunday-night games averaged about 8.7 million viewers. In its final year on ABC, "Monday Night Football" drew an average audience of 16.2 million per week.

The "MNF" performance capped a strong week for the NFL on TV. The debut of "Sunday Night Football" on NBC was the week's most-watched program with better than 22.5 million viewers, while the season-opening Thursday game drew 19.2 million, the most in the five years the NFL has kicked off its season on a Thursday.

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Quote:

ESPN TOUTS ITS BEST DAY EVER
ESPN claimed Tuesday that its takeover of Monday Night Football produced its biggest audience ever -- some 9.1 million viewers. ESPN also noted that it was the second biggest audience ever to watch a cable telecast. Nevertheless, today's (Wednesday) New York Times observed that the telecast produced "noticeably fewer viewers" than previous NFL telecasts on ABC television -- off 36 percent from the season opener of Monday Night Football last year. USA Today observed that the telecast drew fewer viewers than ABC's concluding episode of The Path to 9/11 miniseries, which was watched by 12.3 million people ...
... Meanwhile, audience figures released by ABC on Tuesday indicated that The Path to 9/11 would have been the third highest-rated program to air last week. However, Nielsen does not included unsponsored programs in its ratings data. (Path aired without commercials.) The results were all the more remarkable given the fact that the episode competed against the top-rated program of the week, NBC's Sunday Night Football. Source

OK - so ESPN Monday Night Football drew 9.1 Million, marking the second highest ever viewership for a cable-exclusive program - not the greatest ever audience for a cable-only show, but second is still pretty impressive. For Cable. And ESPN's big night was off 36% from last year's broadcast ABC Monday Night Football opener (which, if anyone cares, drew 12.4 Million). Meanwhile, ABC's Monday night conclusion of Path " ... was watched by 12.3 million people ... " and, if commercial-free airings were included in weekly ratings, which they are not, the 2-part series would have been the 3rd most-warched show of the week. Any program director, ad exec, or add buyer would love to get "clobbered" just like that on a regular basis.

Apart from all of which, for $40 Million in production costs and 2 off-season nights of foregone ad revenue, ABC garnered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of publicity - which is still rolling. Not a bad investment at all.

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Hmmmm ... hadn't read your latest when I posted that last of mine, Roxxx - dueling statistics Laughing

... oh, well, as Mark Twain said, "There are lies, there are damned lies, and then there are statistics". Laughing

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timberlandko wrote:

Apart from all of which, for $40 Million in production costs and 2 off-season nights of foregone ad revenue, ABC garnered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of publicity - which is still rolling. Not a bad investment at all.

BAD publicity. I won't stop watching ESPN but I will certainly think twice before buying any product form Disney and a lot of progressives feel the same way I do. And after all of this, ABC chalked up an average ratings night. This for the most ballhoyed TV events ever, in your words.

Remember, "Path's" 10 share means 10% of the viewing audience. The network fare sucked Monday night, most viewers were watching cable.

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timberlandko wrote:

....if commercial-free airings were included in weekly ratings, which they are not, the 2-part series would have been the 3rd most-warched show of the week.

That is not true. The ratings apparently start on Monday and end on Sunday. On it's good night-Sunday-"Path" drew 13 million viewers average. Looking at the week ending that Sunday, you see that "Path" was clearly beaten in number of viewers by "House" and "Standoff"-two regular season series-as well as Sunday Night Football, Thursday Night Football,and oh yes, Saturday Night Football.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/kelticwizard100/Nielsenratingssunday.jpg

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Since when does cable get included in viewer states with regular channels. I have never seen that before. Isn't it always the big channels who compete against each other? ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and UPN are in the big hunt for ratings.

If this were some Michael Moore film bashing Bush the thread would be just oppisite from the left. You people grasp at straws when ever you can. Face it for a show on a reg channel it did pretty well, your just afraid to admit it!

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Baldimo wrote:

Since when does cable get included in viewer states with regular channels. I have never seen that before. Isn't it always the big channels who compete against each other? ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and UPN are in the big hunt for ratings.

That's just the point. Cable normally has only a small percentage of the viewers of the normal broadcast channels. That is why the ratings for cable are normally listed separately-a cable show which did well against other cable shows normally would look terrible when the stats are listed with the "big boy" networks.

So when a show on cable beats a show on the networks, that is just terrible performance for the network show. Here, we not only have a network show apparently beat by a cable show, which is bad enough. Even worse is the fact that the network show which got beat is this much ballyhooed blockbuster miniseries which the network had been relentlessly promoting for weeks and which had gotten all sorts of attention and buildup.

ABC is like the baseball club owner who signs a player to a $40 million dollar contract to be the club's big hitter, only to see him struck out by a 12 year old Little League pitcher!

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kelticwizard wrote:

Baldimo wrote:
Since when does cable get included in viewer states with regular channels. I have never seen that before. Isn't it always the big channels who compete against each other? ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and UPN are in the big hunt for ratings.

That's just the point. Cable normally has only a small percentage of the viewers of the normal broadcast channels. That is why the ratings for cable are normally listed separately-a cable show which did well against other cable shows normally would look terrible when the stats are listed with the "big boy" networks.

So when a show on cable beats a show on the networks, that is just terrible performance for the network show. Here, we not only have a network show apparently beat by a cable show, which is bad enough. Even worse is the fact that the network show which got beat is this much ballyhooed blockbuster miniseries which the network had been relentlessly promoting for weeks and which had gotten all sorts of attention and buildup.

ABC is like the baseball club owner who signs a player to a $40 million dollar contract to be the club's big hitter, only to see him struck out by a 12 year old Little League pitcher!

We are talking about Sunday and Monday night football here at the begining of the season. Of course it is going to have high ratings that is almost a given. Whether many of you realize it or not football is the new American past time. It is always going to have high ratings expecially monday night football.

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Baldimo wrote:

It is always going to have high ratings expecially monday night football.

Please note that "Path" got fewer viewers than new episodes of some series on other nights of the week. It wasn't beat just by football-it was beat by regular television programs.

If your point is that "Path" was not the lowest rated show on TV last week, that point has already been made by Roxxxanne. "Path's" ratings were okay for a new episode of an ordinary show-no better. But when you sink $40 million dollars into a production and promote the heck out of it for weeks, performing like just a new episode of an ordinary show is disastrous performance.

Do you think ABC would have been happy to sink $40 million into "Path" and promote it relentlessly if ABC knew it would get only the same ratings as a new episode of an ordinary show? Not a chance. For that money, you are gambling on the show being a blockbuster-and "Path" failed miserably at that.

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Viewers Avoid "Path to 9/11" Fiction

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