Michael Cravens notes in Comments:
And coincidentally, The Drudge Report has “suddenly” decided to run a story that indicates that the Daily Show is hemorraging viewers. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but you have to give Drudge credit…his timing is impeccable, given the largely positive reaction to Jon’s appearance on Crossfire on Friday. 😉
Michael is referring to this: JON STEWART ‘DAILY SHOW’ IN SURPRISE AUDIENCE — DROP
Sun Oct 17 2004 20:30:24 ET
COMEDY CENTRAL’s ‘DAILY SHOW’ has experienced surprise audience erosion — despite a publicity push by host Jon Stewart.
Stewart, who announced last week that he plans to support John Kerry, pulled 1,040,000 total viewers for the month of September — down 7% from August, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Jumbo hype from media writers and a bestselling book apparently have failed to translate into any TV audience improvement.
MORE
CNN editors were busy this weekend cleaning up a transcript from Stewart’s Friday appearance on CROSSFIRE. One CNN executive called Stewart’s performace “belligerent.”
Now, as it happens, I happen to have access to experts in the field of TV ratings, so I asked her. Brandy…?
This is impossible to prove or disprove because he was so vague:
> Stewart, who announced last week that he plans to support
> John Kerry, pulled 1,040,000 total viewers for the month of
> September — down 7% from August, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
In what demo? Households, Men, what? And also for what airing? Just the 11pm one, or an average of all the repeats they do thru the day? The biggest problem is that 1,040,000 number… I’m not even sure where it comes from. He says ‘total viewers’ which is not a measurement we deal in. We deal in averages, not cumulatives. Hence I can’t even try to match it to prove or disprove.
Let’s assume he means only the original 11pm telecast. The 11pm telecast P25-54 average for the Nielsen month of August (7/26-8/29) was a 0.67 and the average for September (8/30-9/24) was a 0.66. If you look at the men and women breakouts all the loss comes from the female demos – men were up across the board and women were down. Why? Beats me. Women don’t like the negativity, they just want him to be funny?
Also, as you pointed out, there were lots of reruns, but I’m not sure if there were more in Sept than there were in August.
Basically by being so vague he’s insulated himself from criticism because it’s darn near impossible to figure out what he really means and prove him wrong.
But hey, why should little things like that get in the way of a Drudge exclusive?
I’m a little confused–does this mean you can’t actually get a number for how many people are watching a show? That surprises me.
If Stewart’s viewership is down it is more likely to be because it was artificially high from the Kerry interview in the first place, not because people are getting tired of it (though if Stewrt takes the Bill Maher route and begins to take himself too seriously, that may well happen, which would be a shame).
I don’t watch the Daily Show myself. I just think it’s ridiculous that so many people actually list it as a source of news, but then again, that actually explains so much…
But hey, why should little things like that get in the way of a Drudge exclusive?
Except it wasn’t a Drudge exclusive…
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041018/D85Q4VQO0.html
Oh, and Drudge normally posts the numbers that the cable shows pull usually at least once a week. So the only odd timing is that some one noticed it in juxtaposition to that show and the reports.
But hey, don’t let the facts stop you. You’re on a roll.
The only way to get the jokes on the Daily Show is if you are an informed viewer. If you don’t know anything about what is going on in the news many of the jokes will simply go over your head. They blast both sides equally. There was an interview with the writers and they hate when the audience applauds something, instead of laughs. They say that means it wasn’t funny and that is the whole purpose of the show. This is why Stewart doesn’t ask the “tough” questions. It is a fake news show, which they repeat over and over. It is the responsibility of the regular news media to ask the questions. And if you have ever watched him interview a right winger, you would know how respectful he is. Talking to Kerry on one show does not keep him from making fun of him on the next. That is why it is comedy and not news, people.
CNN.com
Young America’s news source: Jon Stewart
But ‘Daily Show’ staffers hope viewers turn to others, too
Jon Stewart when told his show is a primary news source: “I’m not sure what we’re dealing with out there.”
(excerpt)
NEW YORK (AP) — Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather … and Jon Stewart?
Readers over 30 might scoff at Stewart’s inclusion — assuming they know who he is. For many under 30, the host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” is, improbably, an important news source.
A poll released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 21 percent of people aged 18 to 29 cited “The Daily Show” and “Saturday Night Live” as a place where they regularly learned presidential campaign news.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/02/apontv.stewarts.stature.ap/
eclark1849: I’ve checked the Drudge Report website twice daily for the last two years. He almost *NEVER* lists the ratings for the Daily Show. Does he list ratings updates for news programs, i.e. The O’Reilly Factor, Larry King, Hannity and Colmes, Greta Van Susteren, Newsnight with Aaron Brown, Dennis Miller, McEnroe, etc? Every week. But to my recollection, he’s scarcely reported the ratings of the Daily Show…until it reportedly starts to take a dive.
As I said in my first post to this site…if the ratings are slipping, I accept that. But I do find it a tad too coincidental that Drudge would post a story about the Daily Show’s “drop” in ratings within 48 hours after the Crossfire incident, and follow it up today with a “Flashback” to Jon Stewart’s remarks at the William and Mary Commencement.
I think Drudge epitomizes the same thing Crossfire epitomizes: the scandal driven media. I strongly believe that the problem with the media isn’t that it’s slanted to the left or to the right, but rather that it’s slanted in the direction of scandal/tabloid journalism. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Drudge broke the news about Monica Lewinsky, didn’t he? What are some of his headlines today? Well, at the moment I’m typing this, they include: “Sinclair will not air Kerry Show in Entirety,” “Video: John Edwards Attends to His Hair,” “Kerry/Edwards Pass Out Pill Boxes,” “124 Registrations Faked for Crack,” and “O’Reilly Accuser Had a Crush,” among others. What’s the common theme? Scandal. Embarrassment. Controversy.
Jon Stewart made the same point on his show last night. What response by the candidates during the last Presidential debate became the focal point for a few days thereafter within the mainstream news media? “Mary Cheney is a lesbian…did John Kerry cross the line?” Damn you, liberal media! *shakes fist* 😉
By no means, let’s not talk about the issues, or call out BOTH Kerry (who sez we’ve lost 1.6 million jobs, which is off-base) and Bush (who sez that most of his tax cuts went to low and middle income Americans, which is equally off-base) for their inaccurate statistics. Bo-ring. Instead, the media makes political hay out of a comment that has very little to do with substantive issues. It’s all carefully orchestrated political theater on both sides of the aisle, and we’re so deep in spin that I’m dizzy.
Am I making sense to anyone? I mean, I hope my comment comes across as respectful, because I respect political debate, and I respect people who do not share my opinions.
Michael,
All I can say is AMEN. It’d be nice to hear the facts behind the headlines once in awhile. The news organizations took huge cuts back when it was decided they should contribute to making money for the corporations. I wonder if they even have the resources to investigate the news anymore. We sure haven’t seem them be discriminating with their sources. It seems as though they just repeat both campaigns talking points instead of actually finding the truth behind the statements.
I’ve checked the Drudge Report website twice daily for the last two years. He almost *NEVER* lists the ratings for the Daily Show. Does he list ratings updates for news programs, i.e. The O’Reilly Factor, Larry King, Hannity and Colmes, Greta Van Susteren, Newsnight with Aaron Brown, Dennis Miller, McEnroe, etc? Every week. But to my recollection, he’s scarcely reported the ratings of the Daily Show…until it reportedly starts to take a dive.
Omigosh! Drudge is reporting the viewership of baseball games now! You have to wonder what he’s trying to implicate by that!
Michael: As you can see I think you’re seeing things that just aren’t there. And as I pointed out, Drudge isn’t the only one that reported the flare-up, although yeah, he might have been the first. But to imply that Drudge might have some nefarious motive for doing so… well, when SHOULD he have reported it that it wouldn’t make you think he had something up his sleeve?
As for being scandal driven, I won’t argue with you. Newspapers have been that way for a long time. TV and radio are catching up. The sensational headlines always get the attention and the competition to be the first to report something… anything is fierce. Remember the saying newspapers used to have… “if it bleeds, it leads”?
I don’t think that I said that Drudge had a nefarious motive. I think, if its true, it would be a big, juicy tabloid story that would serve to undermine the positive reaction to Jon’s sentiments on Crossfire. I’m not saying that Drudge is bad, or nefarious…as I said, I frequently visit his site, just to see what headlines he’s pulling and what he’s up to. His site is one of about ten that I visit daily for news briefs.
I merely found it amusing that, at a time when much of the online community was cheering about Jon’s sentiments, he posted a story where an anonymous source told him the ratings were slipping, and that’s the only thing he reported in the story. If it were a story about late-night ratings in general, with the Daily Show’s drop as the focus, that’d be one thing. But it was a story that came on the heels of positive reaction to his appearance on Crossfire, wherein Drudge reported that “Stewart, who announced last week that he plans to support John Kerry, pulled 1,040,000 total viewers for the month of September — down 7% from August, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Jumbo hype from media writers and a bestselling book apparently have failed to translate into any TV audience improvement.” See http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2004/10/18/20041018_125804_flash7.htm
The report seems to link the fact that Jon Stewart mentioned he was voting Democratic to the fact that his ratings are dropping, noting that “hype from media writers and a bestselling book apparently have failed to translate into any TV audience improvement.”
Drudge fails to note that Stewart didn’t make his comment about voting Democratic until the last week or two, which means any audience drop wouldn’t be attributed to his declaration. He also fails to note that, if I recall correctly, the Daily Show had been in repeats for a portion of September while they were promoting their book, after having covered the political conventions extensively.
Am I seeing things that aren’t there? Perhaps. But at the same time, I don’t think the question is “When should Drudge have reported it?” I think the question is, “Why report it at all? What’s the motive?” I suspect the motive is tabloid journalism, but that’s just me. And if you’re going to report something like this, then he should absolutely feel free to do so, but why not rely on the official Nielsen numbers, clearly and plainly stated, instead of an anonymous source, merely stated as “the Drudge Report has learned…”? Why not provide a little information on how the 1,040,000 loss of viewers is arrived at…does it come from a Nielsen index, etc? I mean, September has been over for about three weeks now, and surely the September ratings would have been available on, say, October 7th…why not provide this report earlier? Why wait until the 15th?
I’m not taking issue with the mainstream coverage of Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire. I’m taking issue with the report of the ratings in that context, and the timing of that report. Again, I don’t mean to offend anyone, but I have to call them like I see them. If others view it differently, I take no issue with that.
Oh, and Karen: Thanks for the AMEN. 🙂
Am I seeing things that aren’t there? Perhaps. But at the same time, I don’t think the question is “When should Drudge have reported it?” I think the question is, “Why report it at all? What’s the motive?” I suspect the motive is tabloid journalism, but that’s just me. And if you’re going to report something like this, then he should absolutely feel free to do so, but why not rely on the official Nielsen numbers, clearly and plainly stated, instead of an anonymous source, merely stated as “the Drudge Report has learned…”? Why not provide a little information on how the 1,040,000 loss of viewers is arrived at…does it come from a Nielsen index, etc? I mean, September has been over for about three weeks now, and surely the September ratings would have been available on, say, October 7th…why not provide this report earlier? Why wait until the 15th?
See, and there’s the thing that implies something’s up. If the source of information came from someone anonymous, then obviously the information wasn’t readily available before the 15th don’t you think? It certainly would have been easy enough to verify and probably wouldn’t be that big a deal to anyone.
You say that you read Drudge a lot. Then certainly you know that Drudge does this kind of stuff a lot. So why assume something’s up, or “find it curious” when he does this almost all the time? You said yourself that he’s scandal driven. therefore it makes no sense to “find it curious” when he publishes a headline like that.
By the way, unless you’re TRYING to offend me, don’t worry about it. Peter David was the last person online to say something to me that I thought was offensive and I think he was just frustrated that I wouldn’t see things his way. I don’t take too much said to me online personally.
EClark,
Did you also see his comment after you stopped posting? He said that you could stay or go, but he was NOT asking you to leave. As I have not seen your comments lately, I am assuming you have decided to stop posting, but that was your decision, not his.
Karen:
No, I haven’t read his response. I didn’t have to. I already knew what he was going to say. I know he didn’t ASK me to leave, that was MY decision as I believe I stated. (If I didn’t state it, it was my intent to).
BTW, that wasn’t the incident which offended me, though it was certainly theinciting incident that made me feel as if I should just leave, at least for now.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but PAD and I are almost polar opposites in our opinions. I’d say, I’m at least as conservative as he is liberal. When I call him on something, I get the feeling that he becomes frustrated because I didn’t just take for granted that he meant to say what I called him on. And when PAD becomes frustrated, at least with me, he becomes condescending, belittling and just a tad nasty and belligerant in his responses to me.
The incident that I found offensive was a few months ago, when we were discussing the gay marriage thing. At one point, PAD pretty much just shut down any debate on the subject by just declaring that no matter what reason you have for being against gay marriage, if you’re against it, you’re discriminating and you’re pretty much a bigot. Even though I’m still a fan of his writing, I lost a LOT of respect for the MAN that day because I thought that was just a REAL cheap shot.
I’m not going to get into any of the politics here, I’ve only been called in as an expert on this particular topic since I’ve worked with Nielsen ratings for about 12 years now.
To address the question that Bill had – you certainly can get an estimated number for the actual persons watching the show, but without knowing other factors like for what time period (day, week, month); what demo (all adults? women 18+?) and what telecast (the 11pm? The 10am?) its hard to tell what he was talking about. He may very well be correct in what he says but the vagueness of it makes it hard to verify.
The baseball info above showing ratings and share is what we almost always see. The way you’d get the number of actual people watching is a number Nielsen provides alongside ratings called delivery. A ratings point is a percentage of the television universe watching. The actual number it represents changes as the tv universe grows(currently one broadcast ratings point equals a little over a million). Since ratings are a percent of the audience measured that means ratings points are not created the same – a 1.0 rating for Comedy Central and a 1.0 rating for Fox broadcast are two different things. 1% of Fox’s audience is a lot more than 1% of Comedy Centrals audience.
I guess the bottom line is that like with any statistics you can find a TV rating that backs up your point of view. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Thanks Brandy.
One other thing that should be pointed out since Drudge says he got his info from an anonymous source. Michael asks if the information was available before the 15th. It may have been, but chances are the anonymous source was divulging info that someone had paid for. My background is more with radio and Arbitron, but I’m pretty sure that Nielsen makes its money by selling tv stations, networks and ad companies specific information about the audience, i.e. age, race and gender breakdowns and demographics, etc. for specific shows and times of day.
I’ve often wondered if the cable companies can access that info through the cable boxes. Sure would make Nielsen obsolete.
As much as you dislike the Patriot Act and John Ashcroft, Karen, I would think you’d be against wanting the cable companies monitoring what you view. Especially if the police can subpoenae it.
eclark: The end of month info is available to Nielsen subscribers way before the 15th – the Nielsen month of September 2004, for example (different from the calendar month – it runs Monday-Sunday) was over September 26th. End of month data was available the next Tuesday. I have never worked with radio data but I expect that Arbitron has a harder time collecting data and it therfore takes longer to compile and get it out to clients – Nielsen has those boxes in peoples homes that transmit data daily and therfore they can provide overnights.
As you point out Nielsen clients pay A LOT for their info (we’re talking million of dollars a year) so no one is about to go around giving a lot of it out for free – unless of course you’re using it in a press release to prove or disprove something.
Karen: From a technical pov there’s nothing stopping cable systems from collecting all sorts of info. The problems lie in the fact that for any economic system to work everyone (in this case tv nets and advertisers) has to agree on one type of ‘currency’. Every cable system would have to agree on how to compile the data or else we’d be trying to compare apples to oranges. This has been tried before and failed miserably – as eclark probably remembers a few years back Arbitron tried to get into the tv ratings biz and it nearly bankrupted them.
The cable systems would have to get every subscriber to agree to sharing their info (how old everyone in the house is, male or female, their income range, etc and so on) and then compile it all and THEN send it somewhere to get added into a huge database of all the other cable systems in the country and crunched together and delivered to the tv nets and ad agencies… all by 3pm the next day. My brain hurts just thinking about the complexity of the task.
There is one thing that is being done, Karen…. Direct TV does share its info with Nielsen on an aggregate basis – in other words they say in very sweeping terms who was doing what (as in “43% of our subs have TIVO’s” or the like). They have no specifics on people and the data isn’t seen as valid and usable as ‘currency’, but it gives researchers a look into people’s behavior that when added on top of ratings info can help make an even clearer picture. I believe that when you subscribe to Direct TV they let you know this (I don’t have Direct TV so I can’t say for sure 100%, but that’s how I’ve been told they can do it).
Here ends today’s TV Research 101 lesson 😉
Hey Brandy, don’t get me wrong. I was only trying to respond to why Drudge probably released the information when he did. My guess is that Drudge is NOT a Neilsen subscriber, so any specifics that he gets would have to come from someone who was. Drudge acknowledges as much when he says his info came from an anonymous source. So my point was merely that Drudge released the info when he got it. I don’t doubt that the two stories about Jon Stewart and the Daily Show are tied together, but it seems to me that the person to blame for the timing of the story was Drudge’s SOURCE, not Drudge.
Unless, of course, Drudge was holding the ratings drop story back and waiting for Stewart to say something controversial, which just doesn’t seem likely.