• by Brad Adgate , Op-Ed Contributor, February 15, 2019

FourthWall Media discovered how many James Corden fans watched his new program -- “The World's Best” --  after the Super Bowl.

Audience share of James Corden’s fans grew significantly during “The World’s Best,” a new talent competition show, following the Super Bowl and post-game programming.

During the Super Bowl, Corden’s fans averaged a share of 10%. Then “The World’s Best” aired — and his share grew to an average of 14%.  (A share is defined as the percentage of the audience that tuned-in.)

Even though Cordon’s television program airs after midnight when TV usage is low and is probably better known for his Carpool Karaoke streaming video segments than his talk show, a large portion of his fan base was interested in watching “The World’s Best”.

FourthWall Media collects and processes second-by-second viewing data from over 2 million homes and 5.5 million set top boxes; it has been doing this work for nearly a decade. Their data is rapidly processed and available the next day.

James Corden fans were identified as households viewing at least 12 out of 15 episodes in the current broadcast season (with a 10-minute cume qualifier per episode) of “The Late Late Show.”

Fans of RuPaul behaved differently. “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” another reality competition program, has been airing on VH1 for the past 10 seasons. RuPaul fans were defined as households viewing at least 11 out of 14 episodes of season 10 (with a 10-minute cume qualifier per episode.)

RuPaul fans had a much higher share of viewing during the Super Bowl -- peaking at 10% -- more than during “The World’s Best,” which averaged a 2% share.

Last year, NBC aired its popular drama “This Is Us” after the big game, which became the most-watched entertainment program in six years.

This year, CBS decided to debut “Best,” hosted by Corden, with judges Drew Barrymore, Faith Hill and RuPaul, promoting it throughout “Super Sunday.”

Despite the lowest-rated Super Bowl in more than 10 years, the “big game,” as it has been called for decades, will most likely be the most-watched program of the year. As a result, the lead-out program of the Super Bowl has continued to become the most valuable time period in all of television.

In comparison to the Super Bowl, ratings for the 2018 NFL regular season increased for the first time in three years. Each week, regular season NFL games rank among the top-rated programs.

According to an analysis by FourthWall Media, over the 256-game regular season, 96% of all households watched 10 or more minutes to any individual game.  

This is much better than all of prime-time TV programming on broadcast and cable, which continues to suffer from fragmentation and cord cutting. Only 91% of all households watch 10 or minutes of a prime-time program, this trend has been prevalent in recent years.