I think it only makes a difference to half of the country what time the Tonight Show comes on. On the coasts, yes, putting it a half hour later will put it on at 12:05, which is effectively the following day. But here in Arizona, where I live, we are in the Mountain Time Zone. Prime time runs from 7-10, followed by the local news, then the Tonight Show or Letterman or Nightline or whatever at 10:35. If they move Leno after the news, then Conan would come on at 11:05, which is still the same day. This is also true in the Central Time Zone. I think the biggest harm to Conan from all this would be that if his show were pushed back a half hour, and Leno’s show came on after the news, people would turn off Jay and switch over to Letterman on CBS. Once there, they wouldn’t switch away a half hour later to catch O’Brien. People who do, would probably watch Kimmell, whose show also starts at the top of the hour (12:05 on the coasts, 11:05 in flyover country).
ETA:
Conan has been acting very professionally through all this. I expect him to honor his contract and appear on the Tonight Show as long as it airs at 11:35 and put on the best show he is capable of. To do any less would show NBC that he is not worth keeping, after all. He only said he would quit doing the show if NBC moved it to a later time.
Sure it may be statistically relevant due to pure population size, but as DiosaBellissima said, the demographics (that advertisers/networks tout ad nauseum) are seriously screwed up. Twentysomething sci-fi nerds are undercounted in Nielsen boxes, there’s no two ways about it.
And for that matter, cable companies give people access to hundreds of channels. With the small sample size, it has to be hard to accurately track how many viewers of some of the smaller (but possibly not as small as you think) channels.
The other late-night hosts have had a field day with this. Craig Fergusen teed off on NBC all night, calling them “F*cking rat bastards” among other things. He was absolutely hilarious all night last night.
Neilson methodology is pretty good. It only seems to come into question when people dont like the ratings of their favorite shows. Conan’s numbers are pretty accurate. He actually does pretty well in the 19-49 demographic and beats Letterman there. Letterman is the king of the 49+. Leno is good at that demographic too. Why NBC expected Conan to beat Letterman in that demographic, especially in under 7 months, is beyond me. Looks like they set him up to fail. Heh, can I get Leno’s agent to represent me? This is like his second big coup.
Conan has been on the air a long time. He has Fuck You Money. Although he’d still probably want to avoid breaching his contract, if that’s what it came down to he would probably rather do that than be forced to suffer the indignities he perceives. Or he’d find some other way out of it. Depends just what’s in the contract, which obviously none of us are privy to.
That’s incorrect, at least for TV ratings. In fact Nielsen says that it’s survey IS NOT a scientific sample and what is more, they don’t care.
Nielsen makes money by selling ratings to TV stations. TV stations have to BUY this information. It’s not given to them.
So Nielsen goes to TV stations in markets it makes up. Despite Wikipedia, Nielsen decides TV markets not the FCC.
The FCC uses Nielsen markets 'cause it’s convenient for them but they are total creations of Nielsen.
After Nielsen gets informtion from TV stations that pay Nielsen money, about the kind of people the TV stations are looking to sell product to, Nielsen goes out and gets those types of people.
Nielsen uses “people meters” in the top markets and eventually will do away with diaries all together, 'cause they’re woefully inaccurate.
This is the biggest gripe TV stations owners have. They know Nielsen isn’t very accurate, but there is no other game in town. How do you sell ad space without it.
Odd examples are TV stations carried by cable or reached over the air in other markets. For instance, in the eastern part of the South Bend market, Chicago TV stations come in easily. But those numbers don’t count. The people watch ads, they buy stuff based on those ads, but the people in one area only count to which they’re assigned in.
Other examples are NJ were New York and Philly stations can both come in. Or Baltimore and DC or Boston and Providence.
If your Baltimore TV stations has an additonal 100,000 viewers from DC, those don’t count toward selling ad revenue at all.
This is especially intense in ad markets like San Diego, Detroit and Buffalo which have huge numbers of audiences in Mexico and Windsor, and Toronto, yet these viewers don’t help sell ads in those markets, because of the way Nielsen computes their numbers.
Nielsen also has a lot of flack from black and Latino groups, which Nielsen way undercounts. It wasn’t till recently when the Spanish networks like Univison started using Nieslen to measure their stations, so Nielsen simply didn’t count them.
These are reasons why so many people say “Why is TV so bad?” “Why doesn’t it reflect what people want or their values.” The answer is simple, because it’s not meant to. Roone Aldridge of ABC went so far to say, “We don’t program TV for people to watch, we program TV to make money.”
The lowest common denominator doesnt have any taste. What we all have in common is pretty crummy. Why is it when shows move to smaller cable networks then they automatically get better? The rating system is still the same. Im not buying the argument that Neilson is fixed or incompetent. I think audiences get what they deserve. The question is how can you have quality when youre trying to appeal to a million different demographics at the same time.
Eh, I disagree. Very few things are ever just “business”. There’s personality, pride, scruples… it’s not unreasonable to think that Conan (or any number of people in that situation) would view it partly in human terms.
Likewise - it’s not just liking Conan the best; even impartial observers who’d never heard of either guy would probably agree there’s a basic element of unfairness about all this.
Indeed. I’ve got no horse in this race; I never watch Jay nor Conan. I see a network that ignored the advice they were given and went ahead with their plan with Jay last fall.
When it had exactly the impact on their affiliates’ late local news that had been predicted, and the affiliates screamed blue bloody murder, they decided to reverse field, and jerk Conan around in hopes of keeping Jay happy (well, more like, in hopes of keeping Jay from showing up on another network).
It seems like Conan’s about the only guy who will come out of this looking good.
I had a broadcasting textbook (unfortunately, I already sold it for beer money so I can’t look up the exact quote), which had a brief mention of this issue. It said when Nielsen and Arbitron (they do the radio ratings) started venturing out into black communities to look for people to participate, they had a hard time because many of their workers quit or refused to go into those areas to deal with the people there. I found that hilarious.
Jay said he’d walk, so he’d come out looking good too.
If both of these guys are really intent on walking, then NBC will likely change their plan, keep Conan where he is and move Leno somewhere else. If these guys are really going to leave, then there is no point for NBC to lose them both and end up with Fallon or TBD hosting The Tonight Show. At this point, NBC has no more face to lose; anything they do will help their image.
Years ago Tavis Smiley had an interesting episode on his radio program about Nielsen, the under-representation of blacks, and how this affects TV programing.
