Sounds like NBC is really getting nasty over this
In fact, it was part of the CBS deal to get Letterman. At the time, CBS ran crime show reruns in late night, and affiliates were making more money – and even getting better ratings – by running syndicated or cheap programming right after the local news. Those syndicated shows usually give the local stations about 2-2 1/2 minutes of commeercial time per half hour. CBS agreed to move Letterman back by 5 minutes so the local affiliates could get that commercial time and not take a financial hit to carry Letterman’s show.
Once CBS did it, NBC and ABC had to follow suit.
And Bricker, that’s an excellent summary. The only thing I’d add is that the NBC affiliates are so angry over Leno’s ratings that some of them have threatened to simply drop the show and run infomercials or something else that would bring them revenue if not ratings. I believe some of them are also threatening not to run a Leno show at 11:35, run their own programming for 30 minutes and then pickup the Tonight Show at 12:05.
Which leaves NBC with the same problem they had in 2004. They can have Leno host, or they can have Conan, but not both. And there are competitors who would love to start their own late night show with whoever NBC loses.
Jeez, you called that being “destroyed”? 10 tons of bitter with just an ounce of funny. Whether I agree with him about Doritos or not (and I’m no lover of Leno), his take is like shooting fish in a barrel: “Oooh, you can’t have street cred as a sellout! Look at me! I have integrity and a potty mouth!”
My family got tapped by Nielsen last year. No idea how they even learned of our existence, but it was an interesting enough experience for the two weeks that it lasted.
No box - we kept a diary. Now, we watch almost nothing live - everything is time-shifted via our DVR. The diary took this into account. You logged what you watched and when and, if it was a recording, when the show had actually aired.
There were separate columns for each member of the family so you could use checkmarks to indicate who was in the room while the show was playing. If I recall correctly, this was broken down into 15 minute intervals of viewing time. So if someone left the room halfway through a show, that would be evident. In a separate part of the diary, we had indicated gender and ages of the family members associated with the columns. There was also a provision to record viewing by any guests who might happen to be watching with us.
So, all in all, there’s a lot of detailed inforamtion being collected that never makes it into the short summaries that you usually hear about shows’ ratings. For example, I’m sure that they could infer from the fact that we consistently watched 60-minute shows in under 45 minutes that we do a lot of skipping over commercials. (Yes, we’re one of the families that give nightmares to the studio advertising execs.)
The Tonight show and Letterman run 62 minutes, I guess that is also for more ads?
Yup…there’s only 25,000 households which have “boxes”; those are used to calculate ratings throughout the year. In four months out of the year (November, February, May, and July, commonly referred to as “sweeps” periods), Nielsen conducts broader research, using paper diaries, which are sent out to hundreds of thousands of households.
The paper diaries give a big enough sample nationally that they can do detailed ratings in the smaller markets (e.g., a small market, like Duluth, will likely only have ratings available during sweeps, because there aren’t enough “boxes” in the Duluth market for a statistically-reliable sample using the boxes alone).
Random sampling. They get lists of households from various sources (mailing lists, etc.).
At a minimum, your ZIP code is moderately good* at predicting certain aspects of your household demographics (mostly income level, but also some things like ethnicity tend to correlate with ZIP).
They use that information to build a sample that’s representative of the population in your market (though, as noted above, there are definitely arguments about how good a job they do with it). Once they select you, they very much want you to complete the diary; too many “incompletes” and their sample becomes unbalanced.
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- Note that it’s not a perfect predictor, and they know that. You may well have a significantly higher income than your neighbors, or be the only Hispanics in your neighborhood…but, over the course of hundreds of thousands of households, it’s believed that those “irregularities” largely balance out.
The Tonight Show and The Late Show broadcast for 60 minutes exactly, but some affiliates stick some additional local advertising in the middle and show the rest on a slight delay. That’s why Late Night, for example, really starts broadcasting from New York at 12:35, even though the flagship O&O WNBC doesn’t start airing it until 12:37.
Yeah, you can be sure that they figure that out (it’s especially clear in cases where you’re time-shifting). The detailed ratings which are supplied to the networks (and to ad agencies) will detail both “live” ratings as well as ratings which include time-shifting; ad rates for time-shifted viewing are discounted, because it’s assumed that many time-shifters are zipping through some, if not all, of the ads.
Wikipedia says Ferguson also gets 62 minutes but Fallon only gets 59.
Not to mention, the TV companies do their own polling and generate their own stats they weigh against Neilson. If Neilson was consistently wrong then they would have folded by now.
I do believe you’re right. I forgot Leno was part of the episode. Great, now I’m hungry for Doritos.
Which is good for anyone who likes comedy.
I’m blind and deaf when it comes to my love of Bill. He can do no wrong 
Wow. Zucker is waist deep in shit and is trying to go for neck deep.
Looks like Conan has WME (run by Ari Emmanuel, Rahm’s bother) to help him through this. I’m pretty sure WME knows what they’re doing when it comes to contract law a lot better than NBC lawyers. WME, unlike NBC, actually has to produce results or otherwise they would not get business. Add to that the fact that this conflict is receiving major publicity, which means that WME has every incentive to come out on top.
I would love to read the contract language involved here.
Looks like Jay has the Tonight Show back.
Wow…if true, that is amazingly lame.
NBC is dead to me.
Someone, please, summarize for me? Link blocked at work.
Basically the link says Leno has a new contract for Tonight at 11:35. Nothing in link about Conan.