NBC Heads-Up Week 1: TV rating DOWN 20% Year-to-year

[olivert]

It was widely reported that the OVERNIGHT rating for NBC Heads-Up on April 8 was up over 10% year-to-year compared to the FINAL rating for the same episode a year ago.

Having studied and written about sports TV ratings for over 10 years, I knew that was NOT the way to compare year-to-year TV ratings.

One rule of thumb: don't compare overnights to fast nationals or final ratings.

The final rating for the NBC Heads-Up Show on April 8 was only a 1.1% rating, a 3 share, with 1.244 million households and 1.427 million viewers.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/art...icle_11488.asp

Compared that to the first episode of 2006 on April 16, which got a 1.4% rating, a 4 share, with 1.523 million households and 1.705 million viewers, and you can see...

...that the TV rating for the first episode are down about 20% year-to-year.

TV poker, unlike NASCAR, is a BIG CITY phenomenon.

TV ratings from the overnights, which track only 56 "major" markets, to the final ratings, which track 210 markets including all the little ones, will drop off considerably when it comes to TV poker.

(In contrast, NASCAR on TV is a small-market phenomenon, with ratings adjusted upward between the overnight and the final. NBA, NHL, and soccer are all big-market TV products. The NFL, which is the king of all sports TV in the U.S., works across ALL markets.)

I do know that the contract between NBC Sports and HSOR calls for an option year in 2008.

With the TV ratings for NBC Heads-Up being down 20% year-to-year plus the dropoff in online poker "school" advertising (PokerStars and Bodog no longer purchase TV advertising in the U.S., DoylesRoom has left the U.S. completely, while UB and Absolute have cut back on U.S. marketing as well), you can imagine that the producers are sitting on pins and needles right now...

[Self Made]

Is Heads-up still the most popular poker show with those ratings? I seem to recall it being #1 and WSOP being #2. Though it looks like PAD is doing pretty well too.

[MrFizzbin]

Yep NBC is dying to replace the heads up tournament with Dog Agility competitions, or Rodeo or extreme motorcross or some other filler programming. It does enough to make money. If they get something better they'll put it in. But until then, its the best game in town.

By the way olivert I'd be curious to know how has traffic to the NBC website increased since they started putting PAD, and Heads Up ? Is there a measure of that ? is that a potential revenue stream for NBC ?