ARMSTRONG’S ENDORSEMENT DAYS APPEAR OVER

Nielsen, best known for its TV ratings research, also assigns an “N-Score” to public personalities, which helps advertisers make selections for the stars of their TV ads and for media endorsements. On Monday it noted that disgraced bicycle champ Lance Armstrong’s N-Score had dropped from 137 (during Nielsen’s last survey in November 2012) to 29 […]

VIEWERS TUNE OUT OPRAH’S SECOND NIGHT WITH ARMSTRONG

Despite the fact that, unlike on Thursday, the second part of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Lance Armstrong at 9:00 p.m. on Friday faced little competition from the broadcast networks, the audience plunged 44 percent to just 1.8 million. (A repeat at 11:30 p.m. drew 620,000.) Even on cable it was clobbered by such shows as […]

OPRAH’S ARMSTRONG INTERVIEW A RATINGS DISAPPOINTMENT

In the end, the biggest “get” of the past year (or longer) didn’t get the massive audience that had been predicted for it. Pt. 1 of Oprah Winfrey’s much-hyped interview with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, which aired on Thursday night on OWN, attracted just 3.2 million viewers — far fewer than the 6 million she […]

WILL ARMSTRONG INTERVIEW SAVE OPRAH’S CHANNEL?

Analysts are speculating about the effect of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Lance Armstrong on lifting the public’s awareness of her OWN cable network. In today’s (Wednesday) New York Post, media writer Michael Starr commented that it “could go a long way toward putting her cable network, OWN, on the map after two mediocre, money-losing years.” […]

TV REVIEWS: KATIE

Katie Couric seemed to send out a message on her very first afternoon talk show: don’t expect any heavy lifting this time around. Although she once remarked that her tombstone ought to read “Perky No More,” Couric appeared to be as perky as she ever was on the Today show, no longer attempting to affect […]