ABC's Wednesday comedies are on a roll, as "My Wife and Kids" hit a series high in key demos and newcomer "According to Jim" again impressed. According to Nielsen, "Wife" (12.49 million, 5.2 rating, 15 share in adults 18-49) and "Jim" (11.86 million, 5.3/14) both won their half-hours. It's the best demo score to date in the 8 p.m. half-hour for "Wife," which topped NBC's "Ed" by a healthy 33% (5.2 vs. 3.9). "According to Jim" has now built on its "Wife" lead-in with each of its first three outings. It continues to skew more male than "Wife," making it a nice bridge between "Wife" and "Drew Carey," which itself hit season highs Wednesday (11.37 million, 5.6/14). And at 9:30, the Carey-hosted "Whose Line Is It Anyway" (9.70 million, 5.0/12) also did season-best numbers. From 8 to 10, ABC's comedies placed a solid second to NBC's dramas in adults 18-49 (5.3 vs. 5.8) and moved on top for the block in 18-34 (4.9 vs. 4.6) for the first time this season. NBC won the night in 18-49 (6.2/16) and total viewers (16.9 million), although it was down from last week, when two of its series launched their seasons. "Ed" (4.3/12 in 18-49) was off by just 7%, but "West Wing" (7.4/18) faded by 16%, and a special original episode of rookie drama "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" (6.8/18) fell 19% behind the original "Law." Despite the dips, NBC still ran well ahead of last year's same-night scores. Game 1 of baseball's National League Championship Series (Braves-Diamondbacks) drew 10.31 million viewers and a 3.4/9 in 18-49 on Fox -- that's up 11% in viewers but down 6% in the demo vs. a year ago. CBS' "Amazing Race" (8.37 million, 3.6/9 in 18-49) held steady, leading into a repeat of the first hour of "Survivor: Africa" (7.59 million, 3.5/9), which improved the network's standing at 10. UPN's "Enterprise" (8.16 million, 4.0/11 in 18-49) continued to do well, winning its hour in male demos, while the WB's "Dawson's Creek" and "Felicity" improved on their week-earlier season premieres. "Dawson's" was up 19% in 18-49 and edged "Enterprise" in 18-34 (3.8 vs. 3.7). Both Wednesday newsmagazines -- CBS' "60 Minutes II" (10.43 million, 2.7/7 in 18-49) and ABC's "20/20" (10.21 million, 4.2/11) -- hit new lows, perhaps a sign that the programs' continued sole focus on terrorism is wearing on viewers. -- Variety
Streaming weather has come to the Web. Weather.com (The Weather Channel) and Accuweather.com are among the leaders, providing a variety of streaming weather content, everything from daily local and regional forecasts to lifestyle features such as weather reports for golfers to weather forecasts around the world, including Afghanistan. You can find streaming weather content elsewhere on the Web, including newspaper sites, but Weather.com and Accuweather.com are among the biggest players, drawing on the content they gather for their weather enterprises--The Weather Channel's cable network and the Accuweather forecasts distributed to TV and radio stations and newspapers. The sites provide "on demand weather forecasts for any place in the world whenever you want it," says Jay Mathieu, strategic media project manager for Accuweather.com. Both sites also stream advertising before the reports, with Weather.com having done it for two years, while Accuweather is just starting, in accordance with the new tuner it is using. Weather.com streams audio as well as video, providing radio like reports from one area of its site. The video streams mimic television weathercasts, with graphics of weathercasters alternating with weather maps, or shots of weathercasters in front of the graphics, like a newsroom setting. "The difference between TV and streaming is you have to produce streaming media differently. The text that works on a TV screen doesn't work on a Web browser, you can't read it. You have to make text bigger on the Net," Mathieu says. He also notes that the Web "isn't up to the resolution of TV yet," making for graphics on the Web that aren't as clear as TV. Still, there's plenty of weather information being streamed, with Accuweather.com providing 101 city forecasts, regional forecasts, breaking clips about severe storms and a five to seven minute show called Point Counterpoint. Weather.com offers similar local and regional coverage, plus a wealth of lifestyle features. It now offers video from a lifestyle page, which includes weather related information on home and gardening, allergies, golf and more. Tony Grohovksy, director of broadband services for Weather.com, says it serves one million audio and video streams per month. Mathieu says Accuweather.com served 800,000 streams in August. Advertisers play 10 to 15 second gateway spots before weather streams pop up. Weather.com also plays spots after the reports run. Advertisers also get logos with links at the bottom of the tuner. The advertising can run throughout the site, as Motorola did recently on Weather.com, when it bought the entire site. But ads can also be targeted, such as an airline or car rental company buying Weather.com's travel weather stream, Grohovsky says. Advertisers pay per impression, which is a problem for Weather.com, Grohovsky notes, because the site doesn't get enough. "We may get only 100,000 travel impressions per month, but an advertiser may buy a million," he says, meaning it would take 10 months to fulfill a contract. "We need more users to get more impressions to increase our inventory to advertisers." Accuweather is just beginning to stream ads in front of its content. It recently reached an agreement with Wired Kingdom, which is providing the technology for a new tuner that will make the streams more accessible to users plus make ad insertion possible. "We didn't have the technology to insert advertising before and there was no way to monetize it, except with syndication," Mathieu says. "The idea was to find technology to integrate streaming advertising." The Wired Kingdom technology changed the Accuweather.com tuner. Now, a daughter window pops up with a channel selector that looks like a TV screen, making it easier for users to select a stream. Logos and banners appear above and below the screen and ads play after users make a selection.
The tragic events of September 11 have created turmoil for business markets in the U.S. However, a new study from BIGresearch of more than 5,100 respondents, conducted between September 28th and October 7th, appears to have captured the attitudes, intentions and actions of consumers and it's not all bad. In fact, many of the findings have proven out each day as sales figures for September are disclosed. "It looks like the 5,100+ consumers in the study provided an accurate picture on the national state of mind since September 11 including purchase intentions going forward", said Joe Pilotta, Ph.D., VP of Research for BIGresearch. Some key advance economic warnings that were made available on October 4th to BIGresearch clients were: * 16.5% of people said they planned on buying stocks over the next 3 months while only 3% said they were going to sell. This perspective on the stock market has been evidenced with the rebound in stock market indexes to pre-September 11 levels. * 18.5% of the people said they planned on buying a car over the next 6 months. This signaled a potential for an increase in auto sales, which in fact have increased since September 11. * Two of the top retail categories consumers said they planned on spending less at were department stores and upscale specialty stores while discounters would fare much better. Since September 11, retailers' performance has been erratic with apparel and department stores suffering the most while many discounters are thriving. * Other findings such as the fact that 31% of the respondents said they would spend less for the upcoming holidays and almost 70% said they would spend the same or more have been replicated by other studies issued after October 7th. * Consumers in the study also said they would spend more on groceries and less eating out and these numbers were confirmed by the Commerce Department's September retail report. The Consumer Intentions and Actions Study was the first of what will be a monthly survey designed to help retailers, manufacturers, financial institutions and automakers track and forecast the ever-changing consumer market with a syndicated research product.