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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Jury Still Out on Leno

Until all the premieres are out and viewers settle into their viewing patterns, I will withhold judgement on the success of The Jay Leno Show. It is said that because the show is inexpensive to produce and fills 5 hours of programming a week, a small rating can still generate a significant return. In fact, "With just a 1.5 rating, "The Jay Leno Show" could make $300 million a year for NBC". That is assuming that it is reaching the right demographic and that advertisers see value for its dollar.

While there are many who have voiced their criticism on the content, the audience size is really what counts. If it generates enough audience to get a sufficient CPM, then all will be good. Or will it? Can The Jay Leno Show be syndicated like a scripted show? Will the audience watch a rerun? Will they buy it on iTune or watch it with ads on Hulu? Does the show have any ancillary value to compete with other scripted series or is it simply a stop gap to keep Jay from switching to a rival network?

And so I withhold judgement till Thanksgiving cause then I think it will all shake out.

Online and Radio Up, TV Still Most Credible

Not all old media is dying. In fact, according to a recent study, radio usage for news and information has grown. In fact even magazine usage grew slightly while newspaper and TV consumption dropped. Online usage has grown especially among the younger demos and is considered a credible source for factual content. "Not surprisingly, the research also found that the younger the respondent, the more reliant that person was on online sources." Online usage growth was also found by the higher educated and higher earning population.

Is any of this surprising; perhaps just that some old media (radio and magazines) still have some lags in them. New media will continue to find ways to converge the past into the future. Think Sirius on the iPhone and newspapers and magazines on the Kindle. At some point in the future, everything will be consider online and will instead be defines as audio, video, text, or some form of all three.