Continuing Jericho

Roush on Jericho

"Question: I am under the impression that Jericho's comeback was only to conclude the series and give closure to the fans. Is this correct? I heard the network had no intention to continue Jericho, which would explain the fast pace of working through the story. I am one of those fans who felt that the premise of the original storyline was good. It needed work, but it had potential. I waited each week for each show, largely because it was a story that created great discussion based on intelligent thoughts. There isn't much to talk about with most commercial television programming other than, "Did you see the cat fight between Barb and Cindy last night?" Jericho is much better than one more crime or reality/sex/conflict show. Sex, swearing, murder, blood and gore used to be reserved for after 9 pm. Jericho has a little darker storyline, but all ages enjoy it, talk about it and don't have to be afraid of its content, at least so far. I watch very little television, and I have access to only three networks. Taking off Jericho means I will rent more movies.— Sherry "

Les Moonves: Kill American Idol

"With CBS close to losing the total viewers race for the first time in five years, CEO Leslie Moonves called Fox's ratings hit "American Idol" a "monster" and urged somebody to "kill that show."

"While we're in repeats, 'American Idol' continues to be a monster," Moonves said Thursday at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit in New York City. "It's a phenomenon. If somebody would kill that show, I'd really appreciate it. But it's a national phenomenon, and it continues to do extremely well. It's tough to compete with it."



"According to Media Life Magazine, the three big network evening news broadcasts have slipped badly in the key 18 to 34 age bracket. At the same time, though, the Cable news nets have picked up among that same demographic. All three network newscasts have lost numbers since last year, with Katie Couric having the worst slide of the three.

According to Media Life, the main reason the evening news shows have been losing so steadily is because the Internet and Cable can give news at any time the viewer is ready to take their news whereas the evening news must be specifically scheduled into the viewer’s lives. Media Life claims that the 18 to 34 age group just “never got into the evening news habit” – a pretty plausible point."

Steamrolling Nielsen

"BWAHAHAHAHA. Nielsen’s clients continue to rebel against the company’s incompetence. Steamrolling ahead with new audience measurement tactics that it’s clearly not ready for, Nielsen yesterday announced to customers it would use its “live” national sample of TV audiences to test its online viewership initiative, which hopes to measure how many people are watching TV shows on their computers. It’s all apart of their ambitious (and DOA) A2/M2, or “anytime/anywhere,” initiative.

Nielsen has only signed up 375 households, within their 14,000 national sample, to participate in both panels; privacy concerns have kept most households from allowing the company to monitor both mediums. And Nielsen’s big bucks clients don’t like where this is headed.

So not only will Nielsen continue to have trouble delivering its TV ratings data on time, but the already suspect numbers will be even more flawed."



"Bonanza originally aired on Saturday nights beginning the year I was born, 1959. While its rival CBS series had managed to garner good ratings on that particular evening, Bonanza never found its audience. NBC slated it for cancellation, but it received one last chance: a move to Sunday nights.

It was just what the show needed. Ratings skyrocketed, and Bonanza won the yearly ratings crown from 1964 through 1967 as the most popular show in the country."

CBS: Take A Look

"The top 10 highest rated shows on the Web this past week were:

1."American Idol" (32.35 percent)
2."Deal or No Deal" (9.91 percent)
3."America's Most Wanted" (4.62 percent)
4."Survivor" (3.58 percent)
5."Lost" (3.21 percent)
6."Dancing with the Stars" (2.13 percent)
7."America's Next Top Model" (2.12 percent)
8."One Tree Hill" (1.78 percent)
9."Jericho" (1.75 percent)
10."The Biggest Loser" (1.45 percent)"




"It's no longer enough to look simply at ratings when judging the worth of a TV show. That's only part of it. A lot of other factors come into play, and now Publicis-owned agency Optimedia has set about to factor those in to determine a show's true popularity with viewers. A new study ranks the reach and power of broadcast programs based on viewership and buzz across digital and traditional media, and it comes up with some surprising results. "Gossip Girl," the CW show that ranks a mere 115th in TV ratings this season, ranks No. 15 on Optimedia's content power ratings, higher than hits with much bigger TV audiences like ABC's "Private Practice" and CBS's "CSI: NY." Networks are starting to pay more attention to this broader potential audience. Tellingly, "Gossip" has been renewed for another season. Other shows that shot up in content power ratings include NBC's "30 Rock" and "Friday Night Lights," which rank in the 80s for TV and in the top 20 for Optimedia. Greg Kahn, senior vice president and director of strategic resources for Optimedia, talks to Media Life about why such new ways of looking at ratings are crucial to media people, what types of shows rate highly, and why networks are taking the trends into account for the upfront."

New Blog Alert From Terocious

New Blog Alert

From Terocious



Time-shifted numbers are in for the week of Feb, 18-24. This is Ep 2 for Jericho.

Jericho is # 15 out of the the top 20 most time-shifted shows. There was a 22.5% increase over the live numbers.


"In last week's episode of Jericho (Tuesdays at 10 pm/ET, CBS), "Oversight," a gun-toting Bonnie Richmond (Shoshannah Stern) went out in a blaze of glory, fighting to save her family home. The image of Bonnie's big brother, Stanley — played by Brad Beyer — cradling his sister's lifeless corpse was a heartbreaker. Here, Beyer shares his thoughts on how Bonnie's death will propel Season 2's final episodes, the fabulous Alicia Coppola (who plays Mimi), a Jericho movie and why violence can sometimes be, well, funny."

We Should All Count

Awesome website with Nielsen info.

"Do you think less than 10,000 handpicked households should dictate what more than 250 million people watch on television? Neither do we. Now you can do something about it.

Welcome to WeShouldALLCount.com: America's single resource for the latest news and filings related to the erinMedia federal antitrust suit against Nielsen Media Research (NMR)."
+++++++++++++


"The CBS Audience Network is the web’s first professional online video network distributing CBS entertainment, news and sports content to as much of the Web as possible. Partnerships with leading edge community building and social application providers enables users to discover and personalize CBS content and allows users to easily incorporate CBS clips into their profiles, websites, blogs, widgets, wikis and community pages.

Benefits to Advertising in the CBS Audience Network:

The #1 Television network is NOW ONLINE
The most widely distributed professional video content network on the web*
The most engaged video audience on the web – 2x higher than the closest network competitor^
Content Diversity: featuring web friendly short-form and full length episodes
Community Diversity: reaching ALL of the web’s demographic and psychographic profiles
CBS Online video consumption growing 200% year over year
Research: custom quantitative and qualitative data on advertising performance and viewer engagement
Advertising Creative Diversity: custom advertising units, overlays, in-stream advertising

Jericho: A Boondoggie Recollection

This is an article written last May by Boondoggie at Find-the-boots. I thought it deserves another read.


"But the most interesting part of this story isn't that some fans got left high and dry, it's that the business model failed everyone. The Nielson Ratings system, which hasn't changed much since their introduction in the 1940s and violates every possible rule on randomness of sample (can you say "self selected"?), has only recently started tracking time shifted viewing. And the networks don't take that into account in their advertising rates. So take a show that will appeal to well-off, intelligent people with disposable income and put it up against a pop pablum spree like American Idol, and you'll conclude that no one is watching. I'll posit that Jericho viewers are much more likely to have a DVR and less likely to be Nielson families. And they're far more likely to have a broadband internet connection to view the shows off services such as Itunes. The concept of watching two shows at once, which is now quite commonplace, just isn't built into the ratings system.

Which leads me to a conclusion: Old media really is dead. The idea of selling advertising in exchange for eyeballs just isn't going to make it. The "science" for measuring performance hasn't kept up. Anything you do to try to measure viewership will be self selected, by definition. It takes a certain kind of person to put up with a monitoring box in their house or to keep a diary. And those aren't the same people that are spending money on high tech gadgets like DVRs and Slingboxes. Or burning episodes to DVD from their Tivo so they can watch them on a plane.

Eventually "free" TV is going to be useless. The quality of shows will continue their downward trend as the intelligent and well-off move into other forms of entertainment. The old media will just keep producing more reality shows or mean comedies because they're the least expensive to produce. When your market is dwindling, the urge to cut costs is overwhelming. Look at the difference between the programming on paid channels (SciFi, HBO, Showtime) vs the old media. This trend has been going on a long time."

Tell CBS What You Watch

Become a member of the First Watch! today by taking the survey and answering a few questions about Watch! and yourself. As a thank you for your time, you will be entered to win one of 10 boxed sets of CBS DVDs!

One of the questions asks what you watch on CBS, and although Jericho is not on the list there is a write in space. The survey asks lots of demographic and marketing questions, so this tells CBS a lot about each viewer.

You may also write in the names of your favorite actor/actress on CBS.




"Here's where you come in. CBS needs to know that the serialized and complex nature of Jericho is not a turn-off for the average TV viewer. Beyond that, CBS needs to know that the political nature of the show, and the implications of the show are interesting to a large majority of people, I'd imagine, at the least, to the readers of this here blog.

If you're looking for something to capture your imagination, without having to know physics and math, you might want to give Jericho a try. If you like the pacing of Heroes, but found it just a little too slap-stick and light-hearted, Jericho has what you're looking for.

So, gather here each week as I walk us into the walls of Jericho. Know that every episode you watch on CBS.com will contribute to the cause, and send CBS a clear message, like the Israelites sent Jericho a clear message marching around the walls of the once-great city."