blogs: Rick Redding 

We're halfway through the November sweeps, and the 10-day results show that NBC's Jay Leno experiment is having a dramatic, and detrimental, effect on viewership at WAVE. Let's take a look at the sweeps halftime numbers. In Nov. 08, WAVE was pulling a 7.0 rating for its 11 p.m. newscast, trailing WLKY's 7.8 and WHAS at 7.4. But now, WAVE has dropped to 4.92 and WLKY has jumped to 8.81, with WHAS steady at 7.22. So what happened? NBC started airing The Jay Leno Show at 10 nationally, leading into local newscasts across the country. Locally, Leno's show is doing a 3.43, way down from NBC's 6.4 a year ago. Prime-time lineups from ABC and CBS, on local stations WHAS and WLKY, are basically tied (9.61, 9.53). So we can assume the lure of WLKY's late-night sweeps stories (porn, sexual predators, exclusive Charles Boney interview) are pulling the station ahead. A potentially dramatic change is also going on with the early evening news, where WHAS-TV has lost its dominance at 5, 5:30 and 6. WHAS has lost a full rating point in each slot, while the audience at WLKY has increased by about the same margin. So what's changed in the landscape there? It's hard to believe, but ratings for the WLKY lead-in, The Young and the Restless, are up, while Oprah Winfrey's show is slightly down. But it appears the effect of losing so many familiar local faces may tell the real story. WHAS-TV veterans Gary Roedemeier and reporters Mark Hebert and Chuck Olmstead were cranking out sweeps stories a year ago. They're not this year. And neither are a chuck of the station's viewers. It's not that WHAS isn't trying, though it is also been operating without a news director (the new one started yesterday) and its thin staff had to make up for a bad reporter hire who left at the start of sweeps. The station aired the Andy Treinen piece on gay porn recruiting, after all, and Adrianna Hopkins' story on drag queens. Adam Walser peaked into the travel and entertainment budget of Sheldon Berman. Still, the numbers, at this point, don't lie. In 2008, WHAS-TV at 5, 5:30 and 6 pulled 7.5, 8.2 and 8.8. This year, the corresponding numbers are 6.16, 6.74 and 7.58. WAVE's numbers are pretty steady, but WLKY is head at 5 and 5:30, and a fraction behind WHAS at 6. Worth noting, the 4 and 4:30 newcasts on Fox 41 are up about a point, which could account for some of the audience trends.

ADD A COMMENT

	dax unkle #210412   thu nov 12 2009 at 1:46 pm         ·  Jay Leno is an overpaid douchebag that relates to nobody except the filthy rich!! What body of work allows him to become that rich. Celebrities get rich, politicians already are rich! Maybe america wants to see real people with real accomplishments other than some multi million dollar production!! Just a thought. O'Brien rules!!
	Media Man   thu nov 12 2009 at 3:34 pm         ·  O'Brien may rule...but his ratings have fallen to about half of what Leno did on the the Tonight Show last year. The whole Leno experiment, and the ripple effect it has had on NBC stations around the country (like WAVE) has many media executives up in arms. If this continues, Steve Langford may have to run for political office (against John Yarmuth).
	GtownGuy   thu nov 12 2009 at 4:13 pm         ·  I find O'Brien physically repulsive, ridiculous, and totally uninspired. Leno only became wealthy because of his hard work on the Tonight Show. I still tend to watch the Leno monologue, but rather than switching to Nightline as in years past, I now switch to another program in progress or Fox41 News.