What’s Up With the Ratings?
Everyone’s blogging about the drop in ratings, not only for Heroes, but for shows across the board. Have people quit watching TV? Probably not.
More and more are watching online and via DVR. Heroes executive producer and writer, Jesse Alexander, had this to say about the DVR trend:
Some shows are getting an almost 70% bump in their ratings via TIVO and DVR. A stat that is reported some three weeks after the airing of the episode.
That’s insane. Three years ago it was around 9%. That kind of audience shift is catastrophic for the traditional ad revenue models the networks and studios depend on to fund their business. With that many people supposedly skimming through commercials, the production budgets of shows that have a low on-air rating — but massive DVD sales, INTERNATIONAL audience, and WEB viewership will be hard to justify.
What’s going to save the TV business? Integrated advertising? Smaller budgets? New accounting practices? New biz dev partnerships between content creators and hardware creators? Probably all of the above.
DVR viewing numbers come out October 13 and it will be interesting to see how Heroes fares.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
*crosses fingers*
I watch it live and try to get the rebroadcasts too, when I can. I know some coworkers have missed it because they were working when it was on.