Author Topic: GSN January numbers (Read 16395 times)

mmb5 · « **Reply #45 on:** February 24, 2006, 11:00:53 PM »

[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Feb 24 2006, 10:50 PM\']Yep, the Wikipedia article on curling at the 2006 Olympics identifies Howard as the second...with an asterisk. It's so Roger Maris. When you click on the article about Howard, it lists "Team Gushue" with no skip. Just "Second Stones" and "Fourth Stones." But the Olympics article calls Gushue the skip, with no asterisk. Man, this is confusing.

And there are all the jokes about stones...

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The super-technical term is "skip shooting second". However, this was unprecedented to have a team qualify for the Olympic trials and then change skips, so asterisks will fly and confusion will reign. This is also becoming much more common as it has only taken a mere 500 years to realize that the smartest player and the most skilled player is not always one in the same.

--Mike

GS Warehouse · « **Reply #46 on:** February 25, 2006, 12:25:32 AM »

[quote name=\'FOXSportsFan\' date=\'Feb 24 2006, 03:37 PM\']Query for you folks: If Countdown didn't have to go up against the Faux Factor on Faux News Channel, ya think that might increase primetime ratings for MSNBC?

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[/quote]Off-topic, but: Bill O'Reilly, of all people, is petitioning for MSNBC to get rid of Keith Olbermann and replace him with the man Keith replaced: Phil Donahue. I don't have the raw numbers, but I've been told that Countdown is actually getting lower ratings than what Donahue was doing when he got cancelled. Talk about Most Ridiculous Item of the Day...

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Feb 24 2006, 06:02 PM\']... NBC is so dependent on that stuff to do monster ratings (and I'm sure it gives them an excuse to suck even more money out of advertisers) that they feel it has to air in prime time nationwide. ...

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[/quote]Well, NBC did shell out over $600M for the rights to these games. They have to do what they do to turn a profit.

[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Feb 24 2006, 10:34 PM\']EDIT: Oh dear, there's an obvious joke involving Johnsons and...forget it.

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[/quote]You've all been watching too much MG98 again, haven't you? ;-p

clemon79 · « **Reply #47 on:** February 25, 2006, 06:36:11 AM »

[quote name=\'GS Warehouse\' date=\'Feb 24 2006, 09:25 PM\']Off-topic, but: Bill O'Reilly, of all people, is petitioning for MSNBC to get rid of Keith Olbermann and replace him with the man Keith replaced: Phil Donahue.
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Considering what an utter ninny Olbermann makes him look like with his great Ted Baxter impression, I can't say this shocks me.

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Well, NBC did shell out over $600M for the rights to these games. They have to do what they do to turn a profit.

Sure. And I can not watch if I don't like it. But I'm a realist and I know that a) that's not gonna happen, and b) it wouldn't make a bit of difference if it did, so pretty much all I can do is grin & bear it.

CaseyAbell · « **Reply #48 on:** February 25, 2006, 03:48:03 PM »

According to this CNN story Donahue was pulling an averge of 446K viewers on MSNBC just before he was canned. The latest number I can find on Olbermann was this story's 452K for February 22. So it's close between the two, though neither has ever come within a light-year of O'Reilly.

I'm not an unbiased observer because I dislike Olbermann. But he was fourth in his time period out of the five news nets, behind O'Reilly (FOXN), Zahn (CNN) and Grace (HLN). Of course, O'Reilly dominates the time period so much that fourth isn't much different from second. The real problem with Olbermann is that he loses a lot of his lead-in audience from Matthews.

By the way, the site observes that CNBC dearly wishes biz news could pull the same numbers as curling.

EDIT: Now that I page a little further down on the site, I see Olbermann pulled 353K and 329K total viewers on earlier days. So maybe he is averaging less than Donohue. Doesn't break my heart.

One surprise for me is that Dobbs is CNN's highest-rated show. I always assumed it was King.

Matt Ottinger · « **Reply #49 on:** February 26, 2006, 04:10:12 AM »

[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Feb 25 2006, 04:48 PM\']I'm not an unbiased observer because I dislike Olbermann. [/quote]
I'm likewise not an unbiased observer for completely the opposite reason. Though I know he has his detractors, Olbermann is the only prime-time host on MSNBC I don't find totally insufferable. Meanwhile, it's very, very easy to find O'Reilly insufferable. Olbermann needles him with actual stuff he's done and said, and since O'Reilly really can't defend himself on any of it, his only recourse is to beat the ratings drum, and now this bizarre concern over the "well-being of MSNBC", which is patently absurd on the surface. It's just so precious of Bill to tell MSNBC what they should air in the time slot against him.

During the Olympics, MSNBC obviously ran a ton of promotions for their shows. (Note to Dan Abrams: I really don't care what your position on anything is, but thanks for your "promise".) One spot says that Countdown's ratings are up while the others are down. That's a dangerous way to go with your promos when the other guys are still clobbering you overall, but if the spot is true, I'm glad more people are discovering Countdown.

Ian Wallis · « **Reply #50 on:** February 26, 2006, 04:24:06 PM »

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And CBC isn't gonna be there to bail me out, since the Olympic rights for 2010 move to CTV.

Personally, I'm kind of surprised that Vancouver's CTV station isn't carried in Seatte if CBC is. You'd figure with all the extra space opened up by the digital tier that eventually they'd add it. Go figure...

clemon79 · « **Reply #51 on:** February 26, 2006, 04:41:30 PM »

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' date=\'Feb 26 2006, 01:24 PM\']Personally, I'm kind of surprised that Vancouver's CTV station isn't carried in Seatte if CBC is. You'd figure with all the extra space opened up by the digital tier that eventually they'd add it. Go figure...

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Don't EVEN get me started.

Maybe between now and then it might be if there is enough call for it, as the landscape of TV is gonna change dramatically over the next four years, but apparently Comcast has decided that I need fourteen different Discovery Channels, all showing the same crap they run on the main one, instead of something actually interesting like CTV. (The fact that the mass majority of CTV's programming is stuff regurgitated from US networks probably doesn't help their case, either.)

dzinkin · « **Reply #52 on:** February 26, 2006, 05:20:23 PM »

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Feb 26 2006, 04:41 PM\'](The fact that the mass majority of CTV's programming is stuff regurgitated from US networks probably doesn't help their case, either.)

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It's probably that more than the desire for eighteen bazillion Discovery networks, actually. Under the FCC's network nonduplication laws, the local network affiliates can force the cable company to black out network programming from any out-of-market stations -- and as I learned when I lived in Buffalo, that includes Canadian stations as well as American ones.

Some cable operators decide that once they black out everything requested by the local affiliates, there's just not enough left to justify taking up a channel. That wasn't the case in Buffalo, where Toronto's CBC and CTV affiliates were (and, I believe, still are) carried even though the ABC and NBC affiliates requested nonduplication protection -- but Comcast Seattle may have a different view today than TCI/Buffalo did back then.

Too bad satellite's not an option for you -- a grey-market Expressvu or Star Choice system would get you CBC, CTV and Global from five time zones, plus A-Channel, TVA and pretty much every other Canadian broadcast network large and small (along with two sets of US broadcast networks, one from each coast, if you're so inclined).

clemon79 · « **Reply #53 on:** February 26, 2006, 05:30:32 PM »

[quote name=\'dzinkin\' date=\'Feb 26 2006, 02:20 PM\']Under the FCC's network nonduplication laws, the local network affiliates can force the cable company to black out network programming from any out-of-market stations -- and as I learned when I lived in Buffalo, that includes Canadian stations as well as American ones.
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No, I agree. Right now, there just isn't nearly enough original programming on CTV that would make even carrying it just as repetitive as those 47 Discoveries, never mind the blackout issues. (And around here there is so much of a cock-waving dickfight among the local affils that you can bet your bottom dollar that all of those requests WOULD be made.

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Too bad satellite's not an option for you -- a grey-market Expressvu or Star Choice system would get you CBC, CTV and Global from five time zones, plus A-Channel, TVA and pretty much every other Canadian broadcast network large and small (along with two sets of US broadcast networks, one from each coast, if you're so inclined).

Too big of a solution to solve what is really a relatively minor problem. And, remember, it's four years out in an industry that is going to see a WHOLE lot of change in four years, with HD taking over and the standard broadcast spectrum reverting back and whatnot. And I know the majority of sports fans around here watch CBC's Olympic coverage before NBC's, because CBC's is just better, so as we get closer and people realize they're not gonna have it anymore, there may be enough of a demand that Comcast can't ignore them.

Ian Wallis · « **Reply #54 on:** February 27, 2006, 08:58:03 AM »

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That wasn't the case in Buffalo, where Toronto's CBC and CTV affiliates were (and, I believe, still are) carried even though the ABC and NBC affiliates requested nonduplication protection -- but Comcast Seattle may have a different view today than TCI/Buffalo did back then.

Yes, Toronto's CBC and CTV affiliates still are carried by most Buffalo cable systems. In fact, Rob Lucas, morning man at WTSS Buffalo, was talking about the Olympic coverage recently, and almost always mentioned CBC's. I'm quite sure a few systems in Western New York pick up some of the other Toronto stations, as well as Hamilton's independent CHCH too.

CBC and CTV are also carried in Watertown NY (via Kingston and Ottawa, respectively), and Montreal's CBC and CTV stations are carried in Burlington, VT. I'm sure there must be other places along the border that pick them up too.

ObGame Shows: CTV carried a lot of Canadian game shows in the '70s and '80s.