Ratings and Scheduling: Who's the fairest of them all?

[Shanna Marie]

11 minutes ago, Camera One said:

What's their usual strategy... is it a two-prong approach (once for Comic-con, once right before the premiere)?

I think that's been it. There's the ComicCon stuff, then they do a push before the premiere. There might be a little something around the DVD release of the previous season. But otherwise, there's not much reason to get people too excited about something when they have time to lose that excitement or forget about it before the premiere, which is still two months away. I'd imagine they'll really ramp it up about two weeks before the premiere. They might do a preview press screening so they can get some favorable (they hope) reviews out there that will reassure or intrigue fans, get the cast on the interview rounds, start doing more teasers, etc. Is there a big media con soon before the premiere? If so, that might be when they do a push.

[Camera One]

Colin claims the 7A premiere is the best episode he's ever read or something, so maybe it's good enough to warrant a screening to generate buzz?

[sharky]

Press usually get access to the screener about a week or two ahead of time. Press premieres are less often. Since season 4, I can only think of the LA premiere for Frozen and the 100th episode party.

It's going to be quiet from now until mid-September. And even then, most of the smaller websites won't have new interviews -- they get content at Comic-Con that they use for preview pieces in September. 

[Camera One]

I just looked for last year.  July 23rd was when there were a lot of news article from Comic-con about Aladdin coming to OUAT.

The next peak in news article was Sept 23rd with articles like "5 Things To Know About Season 6".  This was ahead of the September 25th premiere.  It doesn't look like there was anything new... most of it was repeat from Comic-con.

Edited July 30, 2017 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

They may do a little more promo this year -- or they should, since there are so many changes, including timeslot. Maybe not a premiere "event," but press screeners, maybe do something to show the episode to a friendly audience to get some buzz going and to reassure the "I'm not watching again" fans that maybe it's okay. That's a risk if the episode doesn't really work that way. They did the LA premiere for the Frozen arc, but I think they did the most publicity around the 3B launch. That was when they had the cast on Good Morning America and The View. They did a kind of press tour. If they can get that kind of thing on ABC shows (GMA, The View, Jimmy Kimmel), that would be smart -- either go out with the new cast members to introduce them or use the returning cast on the "reassurance" tour.

[Camera One]

Adam is giving a Twitter lesson about ratings.  In case you needed to be informed, this is what he posted:

- As far as how many watch the show? Overnight ratings (which you are discussing) are irrelevant.

- Yes, they matter to some extent to advertisers. But to know how many actually watch a given episode is way more complex

- DVR. Netflix. Hulu. Streaming on ABC. Illegal (gasp!) downloads. These metrics taken together give a more complete picture

- These figures also generally aren't released to the public. Partially because they take time to collate

- Given that, lots of people watched ALL the episodes last season. And for that we are so grateful. That's why there's a season7

[Rumsy4]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

Illegal (gasp!) downloads.

Adam is delusional if he thinks illegal downloads are taken positively by abc in deciding renewals/cancellations. 

[KAOS Agent]

The media landscape has changed over the years, but it's not like the metrics aren't a reflection on the viewership. The media options didn't change between March and May this year or even between September and May. Hulu, Netflix, illegal downloads, ABC streaming were all available for the entire season. Did over a quarter of the audience (1 million people) suddenly decide that watching live or on DVR 3/7 days later was not for them and switch to other methods? Probably not. Those people quit watching. Maybe a few decided to binge later, but I'd suspect that a similar percentage of people watching using those other methods also dropped out of the audience. Binge watching numbers may be slightly different, but live+DVR numbers are still a big indicator of whether a show is holding an audience and worthwhile to advertisers. Try again, Adam.

[Serena]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

Adam is delusional if he thinks illegal downloads are taken positively by abc in deciding renewals/cancellations. 

Those are mostly by people outside the US who don't have other methods to watch. They may buy DVDs or Once merch later, but ABC can't sell ads based on them because they are outside the states. 

[Rumsy4]

4 hours ago, Serena said:

ABC can't sell ads based on them because they are outside the states

Exactly. 

Does Adam realize he basically endorsed illegally watching the Show? But then, a lot of the people he frequently engages with in twitter seem to be those who watch the Show illegally, and their the validation seems important to him. lol 

[sharky]

I think he was trying to argue that ratings alone don't reflect how many people are watching the show during a given week. What he's trying to do is inflate the numbers. Sure, the ratings say 3 million but it's really 8 million! Or something such as. The problem is that some viewers are better than others -- namely the ones who generate revenue.

The ratings landscape is changing a lot and shows can't rely on Nielsens to keep them on the air, hence the Netflix deal. It's not just Once that has bled viewers this season but it's bleeding across the board. That being said, the ratings share is still important since the bleed is affecting everyone so comparing one show in a time slot to another is important still. But even that number went down for Once. 

[Free]

3 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

Exactly. 

Does Adam realize he basically endorsed illegally watching the Show? But then, a lot of the people he frequently engages with in twitter seem to be those who watch the Show illegally, and their the validation seems important to him. lol 

Adam seems obsessed with it, hence why he seems to be always on Twitter answering to fans.

[Featherhat]

Illegal download numbers might help in proving how popular a show is, I guess but as everyone has said above, not in a way that monetises it. Even if they brought them to Netflix and said "Hey look how many people stream online!" I doubt it would have tipped the scales in favour much because people who download illegally who don't already have Netflix aren't likely to start subscribing. I guess if they do have Netflix and download illegally they can start watching legally but there's no way to know how many people that is until they've already made that deal. But that would be the only positive point from ID.

But you know what, GOT is one of the most legally watched shows in the world right now and once again broke records for official HBO viewership. It's also THE most illegally downloaded show in the world. If your show is quality/popular yes people will watch it illegally, but millions will *also* want to spend money/make sure their available to watch it officially or DVR it.

[TheGreenKnight]

Nielsen ratings are pretty meaningless these days, when most of the shows on basic channels are lucky just to get 1.0's in the demo. I'm sure ABC knows better than any of us how the ratings will likely stack this season; I really doubt it was a blind renewal. At the end of the day, after all the cast cuts, OUAT must've been much cheaper to produce than Last Man Standing which had a huge cast (certain members of which were looking for pay increases). I guess I'm hard-pressed to take the OUAT fandom's perspective on ratings really considering how certain they were it was dead last year, lol.