The Game Show Forum

The Game Show Forum => Game Show Channels & Networks => Topic started by: DrBear on December 06, 2004, 08:12:35 AM

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: DrBear on December 06, 2004, 08:12:35 AM

From Monday's New York Times, in an article on how the parties approached political advertising this year:

"As the Bush team analyzed the data, stark differences between the viewing habits of Republicans and Democrats quickly emerged. The channels with the highest proportion of Democrats were Court TV and the Game Show Network; for Republicans, Speedvision and the Golf Channel."

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: CaseyAbell on December 06, 2004, 08:36:20 AM

A link (http://\"http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041206/ZNYT02/412060392\") for the entire story. Really, GSN's skew towards the Democrats should be no surprise. Adlink numbers show that GSN and Court TV, the two networks mentioned in the story as the best for the Democrats, skew female, black, lower-income, and non-college-grad. Democratic strategists would tell you that's how their vote leans. (It also explains why the ads on these corporate half-siblings tend to be rather similar.)

Meanwhile, Speedvision and the Golf Channel, mentioned as best for the Republicans, skew male, white, higher-income, and college-grad. Republican strategists would tell you that's how their demos trend.

Of course, there are gazillions of individual exceptions to these demo trends, as people will be quick to point out. (Come to think of it, John Kerry looks like the stereotypical Republican voter.) But political ad buyers are no different than other advertisers. They want the most bang for their buck.

The story sort of mentions the female skew but overlooks all the other demo info, especially what I think are crucial differences in race and income. The story also originates from the NY Times, a strongly Democratic paper. So the Republicans get a little tweaking on the gay-marriage issue. By and large, though, the story is pretty much down-the-middle.

EDIT: This demo stuff gets to be fun. I started rummaging around various networks on Adlink, trying to figure whether they would lean Dem or Repub.

Just about any sports network looks like GOP territory: male, high-income, college grad, managerial. ESPN, Fox Sports, ESPN2, etc.

Another interesting niche for the Repubs is the History Channel, which looks like the Golf Channel minus the, er, golf.

At first glance Bravo might seem good for Repubs. The demos line up pretty much in the GOP direction. But there's a special factor, the network's gay reputation, which could tilt it towards the Dems.

Some of the Dem networks are obvious: Lifetime for the heavy female skew, BET for the overwhelming black skew. In fact, it's hard for me to believe that BET's audience isn't the most heavily Democratic in the entire cable kingdom, despite the Times story. MTV probably leans pretty strongly Dem because of the young skew.

The news channels are interesting. They all show pretty similar demos, but Fox likely gets the Repubs and CNN probably leans Democratic. MSNBC leans towards nobody, its usual audience. (Okay, that's unfair and unkind.)

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: Dbacksfan12 on December 06, 2004, 03:19:53 PM

[quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 08:12 AM\']"As the Bush team analyzed the data, stark differences between the viewing habits of Republicans and Democrats quickly emerged. The channels with the highest proportion of Democrats were Court TV and the Game Show Network; for Republicans, Speedvision and the Golf Channel."
[/quote]
And people wondered why Bush went after the NASCAR dads.  
Perhaps John Kerry should have promised 4 years of "Spin-Off" reruns.

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: Matt Ottinger on December 06, 2004, 05:53:36 PM

[quote name=\'Dsmith\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 04:19 PM\']Perhaps John Kerry should have promised 4 years of "Spin-Off" reruns.[/quote]
Woulda changed my vote.  I'm just not going to say which way!

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: FeudDude on December 06, 2004, 07:59:52 PM

[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 08:36 AM\']A link (http://\"http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041206/ZNYT02/412060392\") for the entire story. Really, GSN's skew towards the Democrats should be no surprise. Adlink numbers show that GSN and Court TV, the two networks mentioned in the story as the best for the Democrats, skew female, black, lower-income, and non-college-grad.[/quote]

Two out of five ain't bad.

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: Jay Temple on December 06, 2004, 10:28:16 PM

I found this surprising, and my reasoning reveals my bias.

Game shows are build on winning and losing.  In particular, they are built on winning money (and prizes).
Which party rails against greed?  The Democrats.
Which party tries to equalize outcomes (welfare, progressive income tax, Affirmative Action) The Democrats.

I don't know for a fact that the people who run children's sports leagues with no score, no wins and no losses are Democrats, but I would be very surprised if I learned that they skew the other way.

Admittedly, there's a difference between saying that GSN's viewers (at large) skew Democratic and saying that game show fanatics skew that way.

Incidentally, I read somewhere that when sports figures run for office, they are more likely to run as Republicans.  I was unsurprised at that for much the same reasons that I gave above.

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: Jimmy Owen on December 07, 2004, 03:51:23 AM

I'd say the research is valid. I've never a known rich person to advocate "sharing the wealth." For a smart Republican there are easier ways to make millions than by going on TV game shows.

Does this mean Democrats don't have to buy time on GSN, as it would be essentially "preaching to the choir," or would the GOP be better served with ads trying to sway some GSNers to the conservative side?

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: Don Howard on December 07, 2004, 05:05:07 AM

[quote name=\'Dsmith\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 03:19 PM\']Perhaps John Kerry should have promised 4 years of "Spin-Off" reruns.

[snapback]66257[/snapback]

[/quote]
Only if they'd kept the ticket plugs and not shrunk the credits so I could hear Johnny Jacobs say, "Please stay tuned for Gambit".

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: GS Warehouse on December 07, 2004, 11:39:23 AM

[quote name=\'Don Howard\' date=\'Dec 7 2004, 05:05 AM\'][quote name=\'Dsmith\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 03:19 PM\']Perhaps John Kerry should have promised 4 years of "Spin-Off" reruns.

[snapback]66257[/snapback]

[/quote]Only if they'd kept the ticket plugs and not shrunk the credits so I could hear Johnny Jacobs say, "Please stay tuned for Gambit".

[snapback]66330[/snapback]

[/quote]
Problem is, some TV viewers are stupid enough to think that Gambit really is next.  After all, ever since I saw MG73 on a tape my sister sent me, I always wondered just what The Secret Storm was (now I know it's the soap opera that was bumped off in favor of Tattletales).

Going back to Fox News (ObGS: home of a short-lived talk show with Pat Sajak), when I look at basic cable ratings at Mediaweek's site, some weeks FNC's been number 2 in households, but number 5 among adults 18-49.  My uneducated opinion: Republicans are old.

Title: Greetings, Democrats!
Post by: CaseyAbell on December 07, 2004, 02:24:02 PM

Quote

Going back to Fox News (ObGS: home of a short-lived talk show with Pat Sajak), when I look at basic cable ratings at Mediaweek's site, some weeks FNC's been number 2 in households, but number 5 among adults 18-49. My uneducated opinion: Republicans are old.

All the news channels skew old. The Adlink numbers are very similar for Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. It's the nature of the news business. Typical are CNN's indexes for 18-34, 18-49, 25-54, 35+ and 55+: 78, 87, 93, 112 and 129. The younger the group, the lower the index.

As usual, Fox News makes the top ten in overall households for the latest week available (http://\"http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2004/nov04/nov29/5_fri/news4friday.html\"). But it misses the top ten in 18-34 (by a mile, I suspect), 18-49 and 25-54.

GSN skews old in the Adlink data, but the trend is not as pronounced. GSN's indexes for the five age groups, youngest to oldest: 93, 97, 93, 104 and 107.

Sorry for all the numbers, but I couldn't get around them. An index below 100 means you're underperforming an average network in that group. And guess what, an index above 100 means you're overperforming.

Quote

Does this mean Democrats don't have to buy time on GSN, as it would be essentially "preaching to the choir," or would the GOP be better served with ads trying to sway some GSNers to the conservative side?

Nowadays, conventional wisdom in both parties is that persuading the other side in a presidential campaign is almost hopeless because most voters are dug in, with a roughly equal balance between the two parties. The 51-48 presidential result seems to confirm this.

So presidential candidates usually try to gin up their own turnout and more or less give up on making converts. It might have paid for the Dems to have dropped a few ads onto GSN, though I can't remember a political ad of any kind on the network. Well, there was that mock debate in California...