COMMENTARY
Pergament: Local news, O’Brien hit by the Leno Effect
Channel 2 News certainly appears to have been hit by the so-called negative (Jay) Leno Effect on local TV news now that the talk show host’s 10 p. m. weeknight show serves as the lead-in for NBC affiliates.
On Monday, New York Times reporter Bill Carter documented Leno’s impact on local news in a story headlined “Debate Over Effects of Leno’s Show.”
Carter reported that Leno not only is getting the low ratings NBC expected, but also is doing damage to the 9 p. m. shows that in past years ran at 10 p. m., “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien” and the late local news.
In Western New York, the Leno Effect should come with an asterisk. The comparisons with last year are difficult. The audience for Channel 2’s news and NBC shows in this period might have been inflated a year ago for several days when CBS’ prime time shows and Channel 4’s news were off Time Warner Cable in an October carriage dispute that lasted for 26 days.
After averaging an 11.3 rating the week of Sept. 14 on Channel 2 before the new season officially began, Leno’s show has averaged a 4.8 rating the following three weeks. The ratings for the three weeks are down 34 percent from the 7.3 rating that 10 p. m. shows on NBC—including the popular “Law& Order: SVU” and the departed “ER”— had a year ago.
The 11 p. m. news on Channel 2 averaged a 10.3 rating on Leno’s highly rated opening week and a 7.1 in the three weeks since. The 7.1 rating is a 27 percent drop from the corresponding three weeks last year. If you include the atypical 10.3 premier week, Channel 2 is down 15 percent over four weeks. Channel 2’s ratings may have been higher for several days last year in the time frame when Channel 4 was in only about 50 percent of area homes because of the TWC dispute.
Channel 2 isn’t alone in losing news viewers at 11 p. m. Channel 7 has declined 17 percent during the comparable three weeks, and Channel 4 was down 11 percent from the period it was on cable last year.
The biggest damage to Channel 2 is at 11:35 p. m. with O’Brien in Leno’s seat on “The Tonight Show.” O’Brien has averaged a 2.6 on Channel 2 for the three weeks of the new season, down 43 percent from the 4.9 Leno had a year ago. In other words, Leno’s audience was almost twice as high as that of O’Brien’s (though NBC focuses on O’Brien’s younger demographics).
David Letterman’s “Late Show” on Channel 4 almost doubles the average of “The Tonight Show” with a 5.0 rating, which is slightly lower than it had been during the period last year when Channel 4 was on cable. Of course, Letterman’s ratings have risen because of the blackmail scandal that has made headlines over the past two weeks.
NBC has said the Leno move is a cost-cutting measure. It was recently noted here that his show costs a fraction of the failed NBC 10 p. m. dramas in years past and such slow 10 p. m. slow starters as ABC’s “the forgotten” and “Eastwick” that are getting only Leno-sized audiences here on Channel 7.
But the Leno move clearly is costing the network some prestige. As Carter’s story suggested Monday, NBC’s recent canceling of the drama “Southland” was a message to producers who already feel that NBC doesn’t have enough available time slots for good dramas.
As Carter noted, NBC has said it will be a year before the 10 p. m. experiment can be assessed fairly. But early in the game, the negatives of the Leno Effect appear to be outweighing the positives locally.
•••
The Van Nuys, Calif., office of NBC’s “The Office” has such a decidedly Buffalo flavor that you wonder how the writers could have possibly closed the fictional Buffalo office of the Dunder Mifflin paper company last season.
• Mary Wall of Hamburg is the assistant to the show’s executive producers.
• Pierluigi Cothran of Clarence is an assistant to Greg Daniels, the executive producer who developed the show from the British version.
• Kelly Hannon of Ellicottville is the writers’ production assistant.
The three Western New Yorkers sit in a space that Wall said is about 9 feet 4 inches by 8 feet, 4 inches. “With desks and a bookshelf and some other things,” wrote Wall “our chairs end up all being about 2-3 feet from each other.”
•••
Jim and Pam’s wedding in Niagara Falls on NBC’s “The Office” Thursday night had an unusually high rating for the series, but it still finished third in the time slot here.
“The Office” had a 7.8 rating (representing 7.8 percent of area households) on Channel 2, hitting a high of 9.0 in the last 15 minutes when the lovebirds played by John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer were married on the Maid of the Mist.
That is higher than the 6.9 rating that the season premiere of “The Office” received after 2.3 rating points from time-shifting viewing were added to the 4.6 live rating. And it stands to reason that the wedding episode will hit double-digits after DVR and other time shifting ways of watching the program are counted.
The show’s highly rated competitors— CBS’ “CSI” on Channel 4 (11.0) and ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” (10.5) had much lower ratings than they usually do. However, those series also will benefit greatly from time-shifting viewing.
Nationally, “The Office” (4.5) finished a close second to “Grey’s” (5.3) in the important age 18 through 49 demographic. “CSI” was third with a 3.4.
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