Why Can't They Stick To the Schedule

[Julius Leonard Marx]

Re: We have a winner!

CBS has a good thing going with the over-runs or they wouldn't still be doing it. A football overrun almost invariably leads to higher ratings for "60 Minutes" and the programs that air afterwards.

And there you have it.

And why wouldn't that happen if they just said in the schedule that football ends at 7:30pm? The game almost never ends at 7pm. They know it. Why lie? And, what about all the people who don't watch football (and do watch 60 Minutes)? They tune in at 7pm and see a game not ending anytime soon and start watching something else. The "Joe Sixpacks" who watch the NFL may not be the same people who watch 60 Minutes.

Some of you seem to assume the people who run TV know what they are doing despite decades of evidence that they don't.

Nielsen does count DVR viewing both within 24 hours and within 7 days for advertisers. I don't know about the cable and satellite provider DVRs but Tivo can provide statistics on watching and skipping and even on how much people go back and replay something.

 

[imhomerjay]

The networks know very well what they're doing, and they have plenty of good business reasons. Fox and CBS are apples and oranges when it comes to the 7-8 hour on Sunday night. 60 Minutes is a money machine for CBS, and the inertia of people not tuning out at 7:12 or 7:23 or whatever it turns out to be is a big advantage for them. Fox has had virtually nothing catch on the 7 p.m. hour, so turning it over to football post-game makes perfect sense.

There's no big "lie" involved--it's an estimate, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. For the half of the country that finds this debate moot, they don't feel a need to change. Suck it up, and pad your recording time.

 

[Julius Leonard Marx]

The networks know very well what they're doing, and they have plenty of good business reasons. Fox and CBS are apples and oranges when it comes to the 7-8 hour on Sunday night. 60 Minutes is a money machine for CBS, and the inertia of people not tuning out at 7:12 or 7:23 or whatever it turns out to be is a big advantage for them. Fox has had virtually nothing catch on the 7 p.m. hour, so turning it over to football post-game makes perfect sense.

There's no big "lie" involved--it's an estimate, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. For the half of the country that finds this debate moot, they don't feel a need to change. Suck it up, and pad your recording time.

Dear Mr. Jay:

I don't buy it. Do you have any evidence? Do you work for CBS or have inside access to their decision making? So far, all you've done is said we should take your word for it. Your "half the country" population estimates are way off, which doesn't help your credibility.

I applaud you are unwillingness to support bad decisions by incompetents outside the television industry. Allow for the possibility that incompetents make bad decisions inside television, as well.

It is a "lie" because CBS has years of experience to show the game is almost never over by 7pm. The game is almost always over by 7:30pm. It is a dishonest "estimate." They know it is not accurate. Besides, football fans will most likely flip whenever the game ends to NBC for even more football (after a visit to the Used Beer Department). The people being inconvenienced here are not football fans but anybody who wants to watch any program in the prime-time schedule (since everything gets pushed back an odd number of minutes).

I came across the following on another board. Since they have quoted me, I will take the liberty of quoting them, The specific context is different from the principle applies:

Radio is a healthy business; radio is a thriving business, the future is bright for radio; the Internet is a fad; 228 million Americans listen to the radio every day, compared with 20 million for satellite; you'll never be able to hear Internet radio and Podcasting in your car; Hurricane Katrina; radio is all about personality; broadcasters donated $300 million in public service announcements last year; Z-100 in New York is number one proving young people love radio; San Diego Wildfires; Howard Stern wasn't all that great anyway, and his Sirius cume is less than his WYSP numbers alone; Satellite is the enemy; social networking isn't important; listeners love voicetracking and those who don't can't tell the difference; radio has been around for 80 years, and will be around for 80 more; when talking movies came out everyone said radio would die, when television came out everyone said radio would die; America is excited about HD Radio; "Radio Gets Results", blah, blah, blah, blah...

(c) 2007, Radio Employees of Marginal Import Who For Whatever Reason Feel Obligated To Defend An Industry That Doesn't Give Two Shits About Them
All rights reserved.

TV claims to be a public service industry but you bottom line seems to be we should accommodate ourselves to their interest, convenience and necessity; not the other way around.

I also find it interesting that the entire focus of replies here is football/60 Minutes, not all the other examples of networks not broadcasting what they say they are going to broadcast.

PS: I do pad. The greater inconvenience is to those live viewers who tune in for a show and have to wait 12 or 23 minutes to see the show they wanted to see (and afterwards miss part of another show starting on another channel).

 

[FloydB]

In order to understand why they do what they do, you have to look at a lot of responses on this thread.

It's because of ratings, and not because of ratings. Sports bills very well, and they rate well, too. 60Minutes do not rate well, so their billing is suffering. It was mentioned that TiVos, other DVRs and possibly the Nielsen boxes all rate according to the schedules. If football is running over, the automations can't see that, but they see that the schedule has 60 Minutes, so they think the audience is watching 60 Minutes.

Fox's Sunday programs are not suffering, ratings-wise, so they don't have to pull this one. That's my guess.

 

[FightingIrish]

In order to understand why they do what they do, you have to look at a lot of responses on this thread.

It's because of ratings, and not because of ratings. Sports bills very well, and they rate well, too. 60Minutes do not rate well, so their billing is suffering. It was mentioned that TiVos, other DVRs and possibly the Nielsen boxes all rate according to the schedules. If football is running over, the automations can't see that, but they see that the schedule has 60 Minutes, so they think the audience is watching 60 Minutes.

Fox's Sunday programs are not suffering, ratings-wise, so they don't have to pull this one. That's my guess.

I was going to chime in with the same thing.

The networks get good ratings with sports spill-over. Huge NFL audience. In addition, they have to work within a six+ hour NFL framework. It's been this way for over three decades. Only other option would be for the NFL to start an hour earlier, but I doubt West Coast audiences will want to start watching football games at 8AM.

Besides, this delay only occurs in the Eastern and Central time zones, and when the network airs late afternoon games (home team or double headers). The ultimate guess is that this sort of thing has been going on for so long that people have gotten used to it. More of an issue with 60 Minutes and their Sunday lineup, since that is pretty set. 60 Minutes is a prestige program that makes a ton of money. FOX has flexibility, and often slots in reruns, etc. in the 7 ET hour to give them football flexibility.

 

[imhomerjay]

The networks know very well what they're doing, and they have plenty of good business reasons. Fox and CBS are apples and oranges when it comes to the 7-8 hour on Sunday night. 60 Minutes is a money machine for CBS, and the inertia of people not tuning out at 7:12 or 7:23 or whatever it turns out to be is a big advantage for them. Fox has had virtually nothing catch on the 7 p.m. hour, so turning it over to football post-game makes perfect sense.

There's no big "lie" involved--it's an estimate, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. For the half of the country that finds this debate moot, they don't feel a need to change. Suck it up, and pad your recording time.


Dear Mr. Jay:

I don't buy it. Do you have any evidence? Do you work for CBS or have inside access to their decision making?

I apologize, Mr. CBS. I didn't realize you had that access. I thought you were speculating like everyone else.

My assertion is based on evidence--60 Minutes is the #13 show of the season so far, average audience of 10 million +. That's hardly suffering because of the way CBS schedules their Sunday evenings. Cold Case also is a top 20 show, despite the competition from the Housewives. Those are two strong points in CBS's corner.

So far, all you've done is said we should take your word for it. Your "half the country" population estimates are way off, which doesn't help your credibility.

Markets like LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix are not exactly minor population centers.

Regardless, sports will always impact different parts of the country in ways someone will feel is unfair. Some people whined about starting times of the MLB playoffs because of how it impacts the fans in the west. Hey, I'd like to be able to watch the Super Bowl and still go to bed at a reasonable hour, but it ain't gonna happen here in the east. I live with it.

I applaud you are unwillingness to support bad decisions by incompetents outside the television industry. Allow for the possibility that incompetents make bad decisions inside television, as well.
[\quote]
I'm not sure what it is you're claiming to applaud, but I wasn't talking about "outside the television industry." I never said no one in the industry or outside of it was incompetent, or for that matter that perfectly competent people sometimes make bad decisions. However, if the goal of CBS is to generate ratings (and one would think that should be the bottom line for a business), two top 20 shows on one night, neither of which are in the "sexy" category that get lots of buzz, they're succeeding.

It is a "lie" because CBS has years of experience to show the game is almost never over by 7pm. The game is almost always over by 7:30pm. It is a dishonest "estimate." They know it is not accurate. Besides, football fans will most likely flip whenever the game ends to NBC for even more football (after a visit to the Used Beer Department).

I spent plenty of years dealing with TV networks and football game estimates in my career, so there's no need to assume I don't know a thing or two about how it works. Some games end by 7, many don't. They have good business reasons for working from the cases where those games do end by 7.

Yes, some football fans will be swapping over to NBC, but not all. Inertia remains strong in TV viewership. You won't keep the channel flippers whether you say the game ends at 7 or 7:30. Chalk them up as lost. You will keep some of the people around after a commercial break to watch at least part of 60 Minutes, and you'll keep the die-hard 60 Minutes fans who well know by now the way football season works.

The people being inconvenienced here are not football fans but anybody who wants to watch any program in the prime-time schedule (since everything gets pushed back an odd number of minutes).

Yes, viewers in two time zones will be dealing with odd start times on about 8 weeks (give or take depending on which regional games your market gets and how many of them do run over). TV isn't some perfect science. People suck it up and deal with it.

I came across the following on another board. Since they have quoted me, I will take the liberty of quoting them, The specific context is different from the principle applies:

Radio is a healthy business; radio is a thriving business, the future is bright for radio; the Internet is a fad; 228 million Americans listen to the radio every day, compared with 20 million for satellite; you'll never be able to hear Internet radio and Podcasting in your car; Hurricane Katrina; radio is all about personality; broadcasters donated $300 million in public service announcements last year; Z-100 in New York is number one proving young people love radio; San Diego Wildfires; Howard Stern wasn't all that great anyway, and his Sirius cume is less than his WYSP numbers alone; Satellite is the enemy; social networking isn't important; listeners love voicetracking and those who don't can't tell the difference; radio has been around for 80 years, and will be around for 80 more; when talking movies came out everyone said radio would die, when television came out everyone said radio would die; America is excited about HD Radio; "Radio Gets Results", blah, blah, blah, blah...

(c) 2007, Radio Employees of Marginal Import Who For Whatever Reason Feel Obligated To Defend An Industry That Doesn't Give Two Shits About Them
All rights reserved.

TV claims to be a public service industry but you bottom line seems to be we should accommodate ourselves to their interest, convenience and necessity; not the other way around.

Commercial broadcasters are businesses first and foremost; they may perform some public services as well, but the primary focus is to make money. We choose to watch or not watch; if enough people can deal with the odd sports overrun now and then, they're doing their job. We're collectively voting with our remotes; their job is not to alter a successful business model for the occassional objection.

I also find it interesting that the entire focus of replies here is football/60 Minutes, not all the other examples of networks not broadcasting what they say they are going to broadcast.

PS: I do pad. The greater inconvenience is to those live viewers who tune in for a show and have to wait 12 or 23 minutes to see the show they wanted to see (and afterwards miss part of another show starting on another channel).

Again, it is not CBS's job, to use one example, to make sure people who want to watch Brothers & Sisters on ABC can do so because Cold Case ends by 10:00 on the nose. It's called competing for viewers for a reason. Hence, shows run 1-2 minutes into another hour sometimes. It's just a new twist on the scheduling game that's as old as TV itself. If you stick around to watch Shark instead of going to ABC, CBS wins. If you just give up and turn off the TV, they "draw," in that at least ABC isn't getting the viewer. They're not there to be altruistic.

 

[Julius Leonard Marx]

OK. We can agree to disagree. It's still dishonest. Businesses often make a choice between short-term revenue and ethical behavior.

Pardon my skepticism but a lot of guesswork and creative speculation gets posted here as absolute fact by people whose closest connection to Black Rock is a ride on the D train.

CBS is allowed to program four hours on Sunday night because of an exemption granted for children's programming (Disney) and news broadcasts. Broadcast regulations are likely to be revisited after the next election. Maybe this issue will be as well.

PS: I'm sure you have you have your pet peeves (if not for TV practices, then in other areas). I won't invalidate your's (even when I don't share them). Please don't invalidate mine.

 

[chuckydoll]

CBS Control can delay a regular network feed when an NFL game runs late. They've been doing that for years.

Example: The Steelers-Jets game this past Sunday went into overtime and didn't end till around 7:15 ET. A lot of big-market stations aired that game. No problem -- they get all of CBS prime time in full, only 20 minutes or so later.

 

[Vandelay]

Well that is the problem!
If people tune in at say 9:00 for Cold Case and it isn't on are they going to sit through some nebulous amount of time until it comes on or are they going to give up, mumble something about stupid football and watch something else?

 

[ixnay]

OK. We can agree to disagree. It's still dishonest. Businesses often make a choice between short-term revenue and ethical behavior.

Pardon my skepticism but a lot of guesswork and creative speculation gets posted here as absolute fact by people whose closest connection to Black Rock is a ride on the D train.

CBS is allowed to program four hours on Sunday night because of an exemption granted for children's programming (Disney) and news broadcasts. Broadcast regulations are likely to be revisited after the next election. Maybe this issue will be as well.

PS: I'm sure you have you have your pet peeves (if not for TV practices, then in other areas). I won't invalidate your's (even when I don't share them). Please don't invalidate mine.

You rock, Julius! Yes, give him a break.

ixnay

 

[imhomerjay]

Well that is the problem!
If people tune in at say 9:00 for Cold Case and it isn't on are they going to sit through some nebulous amount of time until it comes on or are they going to give up, mumble something about stupid football and watch something else?

Some probably won't stay put, but ratings in the top 20, up against a top five show as competition, show a large number of people are staying around on the weeks it's delayed.