WHILE NBC SOARS, CBS SLUMPS

While last season’s fourth-rated network, NBC, is off to a rousing start as the No. 1 network among the highly prized 18-49-year-old age group, CBS, last season’s champ, has seen its ratings slump further than any other network. They’re down about 20 percent in the young demo, a circumstance that could cause the network to […]

2012 OLYMPICS: BIGGEST AUDIENCE IN U.S. TV HISTORY

NBC had good reason to thumb its nose at critics of its delayed broadcasts of the top contests of this year’s Olympic Games. The network, which going into the games had predicted that its audience would probably decline about 20 percent from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, actually saw it grow by 12 percent to 219.4 […]

NEW YORK POST: CNN’S JIM WALTON LIKELY TO BE OUSTED

CNN may finally be preparing to take direct action to deal with its hemorrhaging ratings, although it is unlikely to make any significant moves before the Nov. 6 elections, the New York Post reported today (Friday), citing several unnamed sources. The newspaper said that senior management is drawing up a short list of potential candidates […]

NICKELODEON GIVING FREE ADS TO SPONSORS

With Nielsen ratings indicating that Nickelodeon’s kids audience has fallen 15-20 percent in recent months, the Viacom-owned channel has wasted no time giving advertisers “make goods” for its failure to deliver guaranteed audience levels, MediaPost said on its website today (Monday). Moreover, the channel is providing advertisers on-air inventory in the third quarter, the most […]

NICKELODEON FORCED TO GIVE ADVERTISERS MAKE-GOODS

Unable to find what it said was an apparent glitch in Nielsen’s ratings methodology that could have been responsible for an “inexplicable” plunge in the ratings of its Nickelodeon kids channel, Viacom has begun offering its advertisers “make-goods” — essentially free time — that are contractually required when audience levels fall below a guaranteed threshold, […]