How do you counterprogram the Super Bowl? If you’re a cable channel that targets women, you play to your strengths. At least that’s the strategy of several channels for Sunday, which features the highest-rated TV event of the season … and the rest of the 500-channel universe fighting for what’s left. Some channels, like TNT, TBS and Lifetime are going the movie route. Other channels, like Nick at Nite, are going with their regular programming through the Super Bowl. TBS is targeting women again this year with its third annual “Hand Over the Remote” movie marathon. The idea is to program a bunch of movies to attract the female demographic, start early and in two cases, often. The first, 1979’s Blue Lagoon starring a young Brooke Shields, starts at 6:15 a.m. It will run through the rest of the day, with repeats of Stepmom and Sleepless in Seattle in the primetime. Bill Cox, SVP/programming for TBS Superstation, said movie marathons aimed at women have been successful in the past against sporting events. Since the Super Bowl specials start so early in the day, TBS needed an all-out strategy. “We wanted to start that very, very early, so vertically we had something very strong,” he said. Two years ago, TBS ran Selena and Up Close and Personal against the game; last year, it was Stepmom and Sleepless in Seattle. TBS delivered a 2.5 rating against the Super Bowl. “We knew we were headed in the right direction,” Cox said. But programmers decided to hold back this year on the channel’s biggest movie holding, Pretty Woman. Sister network TNT also plans a special all-day event, with Civil War-themed programming: Gettysburg and Andersonville in the day, followed by Gone with the Wind in primetime. Cox said TNT’s going after the older female demo with Gone with the Wind, and that both networks’ strategy had been choreographed for maximum impact. Lifetime, one of basic cable’s top channels and tops in female demos, will run a movie again this year. Lifetime has average a 2 rating against the Super Bowl, all with movies or miniseries. The regular Sunday night dramas – including Strong Medicine and The Division – won’t be running. “We’re kind of naturally counterprogrammed to the Super Bowl. It behooves us not to blow up our schedule,” Brooks said. He said that other channels have different strategies, depending on their targets, but he didn’t think most cable networks counterprogram in the traditional sense against the Super Bowl. Nick at Nite plans a Coach marathon starting after the end of the game in hopes of snaring football fans who liked the old ABC sitcom about a college athletic director. “It’s a football-related show and it only makes sense after the Super Bowl to run football-related programming,” said Nick at Nite spokesman David Schwartz. The marathon will kick off with a Coach featuring a guest appearance by Tampa Bay running back Keyshawn Johnson. Schwartz said another episode with Eddy George would have run but his team, the Tennessee Titans, was eliminated. But during the game, Nick at Nite isn’t going to change its schedule. “Our fans are very loyal and they’re used to their specific programs. We’re here for them, and they expect XXX at 7, XXX at 8, and that’s what we’re going to give them. Not everyone’s into the Super Bowl,” Schwartz said. Brooks said the strategy works for specifically targeted channel, like Lifetime. “Your strength is what your viewers know you for,” he said. TBS’ Cox said with a predominantly female audience, the channel hasn’t had trouble against the Super Bowl. “It’s the opposite. They’re very strong. The ‘Hand over the Remote’ has become very popular with ad sales,” he said.
After nearly three months after launching competing tabloids targeting Gen Y readers, the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times have begun the process to transitioning the flashy dailies from free samples to paid circulation. The process could take months, and it will be the first real test of whether their efforts to attract younger readers are working. In late October, the Tribune launched a 40-page morning tabloid called Red Eye, targeting readers 18-34, while the rival Sun-Times debuted a strikingly similar product called Red Streak weeks later. Ever since, Chicago has been littered with hawkers and free newspapers as the two handed out roughly 100,000 copies each day hoping to give their paper a jump on the other. “We did some aggressively sampling across the city and have recently been pulling back on the number of sample copies,” explains Tribune spokeswoman Patty Wetli. “We’ve been decreasing the number of trial copies in the marketplace and replacing our samplers with either a paid hawker or a Red Eye vending box. We’re doing it in very targeted areas and we’re rolling this out gradually.” Tribune is not saying how many papers are being sold, but says that timed with its conversion to paid circulation, it has increased the number of retail outlets where Red Eye is sold to 1,300 across the city and nearby suburbs. The Sun-Times has also begun to charge a quarter for its Red Streak, distributed at hundreds of spots around Chicago each afternoon. The Sun-Times did not return calls seeking comment. For the time being no on is sure just who is reading all these free newspapers. Wetli says they won’t have readership data back from Gallup for several months to determine if the paper is being read by its targeted 18-34 year olds, or by existing newspaper readers. For more immediate feedback, Red Eye has started a reader panel, which sends surveys to some of the 900 participants quizzing them about the previous day’s edition. “I see them read a lot on the bus,” says Aimee Keefer, a Chicago commuter and print supervisor for Zenith Media. “We did get some free advertising at the beginning, but we’re still waiting to see some of the figures before we make any buys. The jury is still out on whether they’re going to make it.” The industry is watching closely as well, as it hopes to stem the tide of declining readership among the young. According to Northwestern University’s Media Management Center, the number of daily newspaper readers between 21 to 25 year olds is half of what it was in the early 1970’s. Today just one-in-five reads a newspaper everyday. Other newspaper groups are looking at launching similar projects. Arlington, VA-based Gannett is test-marketing two separate Gen Y offerings at the Lansing State Journal and at the Idaho Stateman in Boise. Keefer likes the way both Red Streak and Red Eye approach the news and is optimistic that they are successful in bringing in younger readers, particularly 18 to 24 year olds. “That is a hard to come by age group as far as print goes,” says Keefer, who is responsible for making print decisions for clients like Verizon Wireless. “That’s a big demographic that they are after,” she says of Verizon, which yet to move any dollars from the existing dailies into either of the “Reds.” Still, Wetli says advertising “has gone better than expected.” With a business model closer to broadcast with a finite amount of inventory, she says Red Eye has sold out several Friday editions since its launch. One high point was a buy from Minicooper, which has not placed much print advertising in Chicago until now. Wetli says they have also been able to take advertising dollars from inner-city nightclubs, restaurants, and boutiques, many of which are too small to place an ad in the Tribune. “They don’t need to get a million people, including people out in Chambord or Crystal Lake, when they just have a boutique in Lincoln Park. It’s too much geography for them. Red Eye is targeted more geographically and demographically.”
Two special programs – football and an awards ceremony – dominated the latest Nielsen Media Research ratings list along with perennial winners CSI, Friends and E.R. For the week ended Sunday, CBS led in total viewers and households with a double-digit rating of 10.6 and a 17 share. NBC followed with a 9.1 rating and a 14 share, and ABC came in third with a 6 rating and a 10 share. Fox, energized by an almost top-10 episode of Joe Millionaire, came in fourth with a 5 rating and an 8 share. Following were The WB (2.6/4), UPN (2/3) and Pax (0.8/1). The ratings were delayed a day because of Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Nielsen Media Research said Wednesday. Among adults 18-49, CBS retained the lead (5.7/14) for the week but in a slimmer margin against NBC (5.4/14). Nearly tied were Fox (3.7/9) and ABC (3.5/9). The WB came in with a 1.9/5, UPN a 1.2/3 and Pax a 0.3/1. The week’s top-rated program was the AFC Championship between the Tennessee Titans and the Oakland Raiders, which averaged 41 million viewers to give it a 24.6 rating and 38 total household share. CBS said it delivered a 16.5/38 in adults 18-49, 18.1/39 in adults 25-54, 19/4/48 in men 18-34 and a 21.7/48 in men 18-49. The postgame show, at 10:24 p.m. Sunday night, was in fourth place with a 13.2/20 in total households. The AFC Championship Game is the season’s highest-rated and most-watched program of the season to date, though that record will doubtless be broken by the Super Bowl on Sunday. The other signature special for the week, the Golden Globes on Sunday night, brought NBC fifth place for the week in total households and viewers. It delivered about a 7.7 rating and 17 share among adults 18-49 and 20 million total viewers. It’s up about 80% over NBC’s season-to-date 4.2 rating among adults 18-49 in the 8-11 p.m. Sunday night time period. It also finished tops ahead of the week’s top-rated Titans-Raiders game among women 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54. ABC, which expects a big week with Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast, had only one entrant in the top 10 ranking: The Bachelorette. It delivered a 10.9/16 in total households and viewers and was the night’s number-one broadcast among adults 18-49 (8.5/20). It beat an original episode of The West Wing (which was tied for 14th place for the week) by 21% in total viewers (17.4 million vs. 14.4 million) and by 73% in adults 18-49 (8.5/20 vs. 4.9/12). Among regularly scheduled programs, CSI bested its Thursday night competition on NBC, ER, for the second week in a row. CSI won in households, viewers and key demographics, including adults 18-49 and adults 25-54. It as 3.7 million viewers ahead of Friends and 6 million viewers ahead of ER. The top 10 programs in total households/viewers as ranked by Nielsen Media Research for the week of Jan. 13-19:
As a syndicated TV group’s big convention winds down in New Orleans, its leader plans to step down. Bruce Johansen, president and CEO of the National Association of Television Program Executives, announced his resignation Wednesday afternoon. He joined NAPTE in 1993 and will remain in the job until his replacement is found. NATPE also said Johansen would become a long-term adviser to the organization and its board of directors following his official resignation. A successor hasn’t been named yet, although a search committee headed by NATPE co-founder Lew Klein is expected to begin work right away. “It has been an extraordinary decade working with NATPE, which has provided many advantages and benefits to the global television industry. Our mandate was help our business grow and constantly challenge itself to reach for new heights, and I am pleased to have been a part of helping the television business evolve,” Johansen said in a prepared statement. In other developments, NATPE unveiled its new board of directors and executive committee. The executive committee will be headed by newly elected NATPE chairwoman Peggy Kelly, SVP/global client services at Universal McCann in New York. The committee also includes Tony Vinciquerra, NATPE’s immediate past chairman and president/CEO of Fox Networks Group in Los Angeles; Carole Black, president/CEO of Lifetime Entertainment Services in New York; Emerson Coleman, VP/programming at Hearst-Argyle Television in New York; and Dennis Williamson, SVP of Belo Corp. in Dallas. NATPE also announced three new board members: Gary Marenzi, president of Paramount International Television in Los Angeles; Gilles Meunier, commercial director at SmartJog in Paris; and John Reardon, west coast regional vice president of Tribune Television/GM of KTLA-TV in Los Angeles. “Our industry finds itself at a crossroad where we all must look to the future so that all sectors closely tied to the television business are strategically positioned to achieve continued growth and success. NATPE will be at the forefront of this endeavor,” said Kelly.