• by Wayne Friedman , May 8, 2006

A new study has shown that commercial viewership is slightly under that of program viewership. But don't look for media buyers to start using this data in their negotiations yet.

The study by Magna Global revealed that the average rating of a commercial pod on the six broadcast networks is 93 percent that of a program.

This came from a study the media agency put together from the last two seasons in surveying minute-by-minute ratings. Magna Global results came from looking at the average commercial pod--in which anywhere from two to four or more commercials might air. The average network commercial pod was 3 minutes and 24 seconds long.

Of all networks, CBS has the least drop-off in viewers going from program to commercial pods, averaging about 5 percent. CBS had a commercial pod-to-program index of 95. UPN had the biggest drop among the six networks--9 percent. Its index was 91.

Twenty-five cable networks were worse than the networks, averaging 11 percent. But Court TV, Bravo, and Fox News did better than the average cable network--and scored numbers more or less in line with broadcast networks. Two of the worst cable offenders were VH1 and CNBC, which dropped viewership some 30 percent and 32 percent, respectively, going from program to commercials.

Broadcast shows such as CBS' "Survivor" and "Amazing Race" had some of the best numbers--a 96 index and a 95 index, respectively. Other reality shows such as UPN's "America's Next Top Model" and WB's "Beauty and the Geek" scored some of the lowest--a 90 index and 89 index, respectively.

Overall, comedy did a bit better than drama on the broadcast networks, with comedy scoring a 94 index to 93 for drama.

Despite these differences, Magna Global argued against using these measures as currency where media buyers could determine pricing for commercial buys.

Using minute-by-minute ratings when comparing commercial pods against programs is inconsistent: There's too much variation episode-to-episode, pod-to-pod, month-to-month, and by commercial position within a pod.

Magna Global went on to note that among program type, there were general differences in the commercial pod-to-program index. For comedies, rating size had little impact on commercial pod viewers. But lower-rated dramas and reality shows tend to have lower commercial pod indexes than higher-rated shows.

Some of best-performing commercial pods were those at the end of one-hour dramas and reality shows--since those shows have the tendency to climax in the final minutes of each episode and keep viewers glued to the TV screen.

Many hour-long series on broadcast contain five commercial pods, with cable dramas averaging four. But cable has longer pods than networks--3:50 versus 3:24 for broadcast. This could account for cable having poorer commercial pod indexes than broadcast.

As has been known for some time, the "A" commercial pod position--the first commercial that runs in the pod--generally gets better viewership than the commercials that run afterwards in a pod. For broadcast networks, the "A" position was about 2 percent higher than the entire pod. For cable, the "A" position did much better--about 6 percent.

In surveying all non-program time--national commercials, local commercials, and promotional time--ABC had the highest percentage of national commercials and the lowest percentage of local commercials.

Fox had by far the highest percentage of local commercials, and lowest percentage of national commercials. CBS and ABC dramas tended to have the highest percentage of network promos. Fox dramas and CBS comedies had the lowest percentage of promos.