AdAge is a magazine that gives estimates, think Broadcasting & Cable will do it as well - check out those trade mags at some point if you want fine-tuned numbers.

I can give you ball park but first I'll explain how it sells: an advertiser pays a CPM, or cost per thousand eyeballs for a 30 second ad in Prime. That's what gets negotiated per show, and that can go up or down based on a lot of factors (is the audience of the show college educated, wealthy, more male etc) - once the CPM is negotiated the total price can be determined. Higher ratings, higher eyeball total, higher price.

So for a Network ad (which is aired simultaneously across the entire country) - for crappy rated series in Primetime (think RockCenter, repeats of scripted) it can be maybe $50k per ad - hit shows can exceed $200k. Of course the Super Bowl ad is another benchmark for price.

You can also buy Local ads in primetime (the ads run by local TV stations that aren't run nationwide, only in their market per FCC designatino): you can back into the cost by knowing how much that market hits as a % of the country. So if you wanted to buy a local ad in say the New York market (which is like 7% of the country), you can get a ballpark estimate of the price that way.

Al, there's been alot of talk about the number of episodes needed for syndication and how that 100 episode level is fairly important.

Last year in April before the first season was over TNT bought the syndication rights to Hawaii 5-0 and said they would start airing the show in 2014. Is this rare? Was it only because it's an obvious fit for CBS to keep on the air 5+ years?

Re: Man Up, it's a long shot to stick around at this point. We finished the 13 episode order last Friday. They ordered two more scripts, one of which I'm currently working on from home, but that doesn't really mean much. I don't think these scripts will ever see the light of day. My guess is they'll finish airing the 13 and unless, for some completely unforeseen reason, there's an uptick in the ratings, that will be the end of it. If it dives really badly, it's possible they could just pull before even finishing the 13 or maybe burn if off at some other time slot.

Rendle, fyi, the new magic number for syndication is 88.

Actually, you should check out that Community thread, lots of stuff written about this dynamic.

But ultimately, the number (I haven't run series level economics in a while, and the market has changed over the past couple years, but probably not so much that I'm very wrong) was more like 80 episodes projection - if it got produced to that level - that was enough for a TV station or Cable Network to "strip" the programming (run it M-F for X number of weeks).

However, the marketplace is changing, and each negotiation is completely dependent on the Cable Network, TV station, or other syndicator's (like Netflix's) needs. For example, Netflix will buy just 1 season of a series as they are just looking for more and more originall produced product.

So in the case of TNT for this Hawaii 5-0 deal:

From a TNT perspective: they are taking the risk that they won't get enough episodes of Hawaii 5-0 to properly "strip", but would still have at least a couple seasons of product to air. And likely, by getting the rights early in Hawaii 5-0's life, they paid a cheaper price than they would if it were a huge hit 4 years out.

From a CBS perspective: if anything, selling earlier (after Season 1) into syndication suggests they don't have a ton of faith it will be a huge hit down the road. The preferred way to sell any product of course is at peak market value - usually a hit show's ratings will rise for the first 3 years, and level down.

So to more broadly answer your question - if a Cable Network or TV station needs product to "strip", that 80 episode target is important. Otherwise, it's deal by deal.

ohhhh yea I watched community and it went up

Wow. CBS doesn't mess around. Apparently they've cut their season order of Rules of Engagement from 18 to 13 episodes. RoA posted a 3.5/9 (A18-49) with 11.57m total viewers. It was the second most viewed show across all networks last Thursday.

In contrast NBC is floundering (18-49 adjusted):

Community
1.5/4 3.49m

Parks & Recreation
1.8/5 3.66m

The Office
3.0/7 5.96m

Whitney
2.1/5 4.28m

If NBC replaced Community with 2 new sitcoms this week with minimum promotion the numbers probably wouldn't be any worse.

It has a huge drop from its lead in, every week, which is probably why CBS doesn't care to let it go in the 18 episode order. I seem to remember a second reason behind that episode order cut, but I can't remember what it is, right now.

I think the other reason is that they needed to make room for some Rob Schneider show that will probably get canceled quickly, or something...

Ha, was just going to post about the Rob Schneider show. I remember back at upfronts in May the only comedies they were adding were Two Broke Girls and How To Be A Gentleman but then they did add the Schneider show later.

http://www.aoltv.com/2011/09/27/cbs-...neider-sitcom/

I like Riva, so I'll give it a look, when it comes on.

I think How To Be A Gentleman only aired 3 episodes, 4 max. It got destroyed in the one Saturday episode they gave it.

If I DVR a channel manually for like an hour or two instead of DVRing each show individually, does that hurt its DVR ratings?

If you don't have a Nielson box it doesn't matter if you DVR in 1 minute intervals.

Also, Nielsen measures DVR playback - so the manual vs. show DVR setting would make no difference if you happened to be in a Nielsen home.

Harry's Law had a brutal 1.1 last night. That's definitely lowest ratings this show has ever seen. It's certainly going to get canceled, and NBC probably can't wait to move it to Sundays. I don't really get why people aren't watching it, unless they just hated the previous episode, and don't want it to degenerate to that kind of political preaching.

It's certainly one of the best sarcamas (sarcastic drama) on NBC, but it's just never found a young audience. They removed the best looking cast member (Brittany Snow), which assures it of never getting a younger audience.

To all who made lists of the big 4, how is FOX ever 3rd?

For them this season hasn't been great so far but their A18-49 ratings are still waayyyyy ahead of ABC and it will take more than one mediocre season to change that. ABC are solid, and have had a pretty good start this season but despite that good start, they are still well behind FOX.

If on the other hand you were just rating on how good the season has been to each individual network irrespective of how the other networks are doing, then I agree with the CBS>ABC>FOX>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>NBC consensus.

I think one of the metrics Al wanted us to use was the future. FOX's shows are not lining up well, for the future, while a good portion of ABC's new shows will definitely make it to next season, which is a major reason why FOX, for me, deserves to be third.

Last night, I Hate My Teenage Daughter premiered on FOX. While the ratings are "okay", I think they spell disaster for the show. A 2.8 in the 18-49 and 6.84 million viewers for its premiere means it's likely done. When you factor in that it was against mostly reruns, that's a problem. Did anyone watch the show, and have any comments?

Interestingly, both Harry's Law and SVU had significant upticks, due to the other networks being in reruns. There's at least a small chance that Harry's Law ratings will improve once it moves to Sundays. It's been awhile since either of those shows have approached 10 million overall viewers. I think Harry's law has been averaging around a 1.2 all season (1.4 last night), and SVU has been averaging around a 2.0 (2.2 last night).

There was a quick discussion about Nielsen and ratings (a Nielsen user writes in on how they track) on the recent After Dark ep of the SlashFilm's Podcast.

http://slashfilm.com/filmcast/?p=408

Its near the end of the Podcast.

Seems like a good time to revive this thread now that the winter season is in full swing.

30 Rock premiered to terrible numbers (1.8/5) last night while Rob crushed (4.1/11). P&R only brought in a 1.9 as well. I'm only half joking when I say this can't be good for the future of network sitcoms.

If the Communities, P&Rs and 30 Rocks struggle to bring in good ratings then it only makes sense for NBC to bring back the laugh track full force and stock up on Chuck Lorre clones. They suck but they do bring in the $$.

And holy hell, The Firm tanked hard (1.0/3). NBC just cannot buy a winner.

NBC's low ratings bar is good for us. All of those shows would have been canceled on any other network, and I don't think NBC has any of the kind of plans to make the kind of sitcoms CBS makes. They want to do the whole Whitney style direction, which is a very bad move (cue me hoping hard for the failure of Whitney and Chelsea, next week).

Also, no one's going to make much noise about it, but Up All Night is in real trouble. It premiered very poorly in the new time slot, based on what I think were much higher expectations. A 2.0 is decent for an NBC comedy, but it has The Office lead in, and dropped .9 from it, something that Whitney really wasn't doing in that slot.

Another edit is just this note about The Finder:

Bones ratings:

2.4 in the 18-49 demo
8.63 million overall viewers

The Finder ratings:

1.7 in the 18-49 demo
5.45 million overall viewers

Wow, those are bad numbers for a spinoff, being led in by its brother. It's not often you can say a spinoff lost 3.18 million viewers from its lead in that it was spun off from. This show has to be considered to be on life support, unless it's moving somewhere else.

This brings up what I think is a somewhat interesting point: ratings differential between Single Cam and Multi-Cam sitcoms... (thought of this as I believe every Chuck Lorre sitcom/clone is a traditional multi-cam)....

It'd be interesting to see what the numbers look like for say the past decade. I'm trying to think of the first single cam that was very popular, maybe Malcolm in the Middle? (It premiered in 2000.)

I didn't think Single Cam made much difference anymore in ratings (ie, hurt them), as I figured by now the American public was very used to seeing it. But who knows maybe not? FWIW, and counter to my point - Modern Family is the most popular sitcom on TV and of course Single Cam.

I think the specific weakness for 30 Rock/Community is that they are very narrow (but wow, pretty shocked at 30 Rock's premiere doing so poorly), and P&R suffers by proximity in that NBC block.

While I don't disagree with the finders rating being low, I don't exactly think that it's fair to call it a spinoff since the characters were in one or two episodes (I think) and the premise is not really that similar either. Maybe I'm wrong in my interpretation of a spinoff.

That said, I liked the show - but I sort of felt like I was watching The Mentalist.

Spinoffs can be defined very loosely. If there was ever a character crossover, it can be considered a spinoff. FOX definitely considers this a spinoff, and marketed it as a spinoff, albeit poorly.

For modern day, I think Malcolm in the Middle is considered the defining single camera sitcom, but The Wonder Years was definitely a single camera sitcom (non-traditional sitcom, but definitely still a sitcom), long before anyone was doing that, if I am not mistaken, and it was extremely popular. I think Parker Lewis Can't Lose was also a single camera sitcom, though probably not very popular. There were a few in the 90s, but my memory is escaping me right now.

I also don't think whether a sitcom is single cam or multi-cam makes any difference to the average consumer. They have to be drawn in somehow, and no one pushes their shows harder than CBS, and it has a great outlet to do so, NFL football. As you said yourself, all of the NBC comedies are niche shows, that don't have broad appeal. The humor isn't low brow on any of them, and people just like to laugh at stupid stuff. They also probably don't want to have to pay close attention, either.

Al, wikipedia has a list of supposedly every single camera sitcom in TV history. It's a lot more extensive than I remember, and there were lots of popular ones prior to 1980. The main difference is the lack of a laugh track, between then and now. It's a pretty interesting list, though I feel at least some of the shows were doing both multi and single cam shooting that are on the list, going from memory. Malcolm in the Middle isn't even on their list, which I find to be interesting. LOLwikipedia, as usual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ation_comedies