All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Whenever you make a product and it becomes shorthand for all its competitors – like “Kleenex” or “Coke” or “Xerox” – you figure the company is making money hand over fist, right?

Well, one of the most popular media products in years, TiVo – which had the added bonus of becoming a verb as well – finds themselves in the red and is now apparently trying to patch up its relationship with the networks and advertisers it used to antagonize.

How did the 'stickin' it to the man' company change its approach?

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CNBC Saga, Part 349: The Maria Bartiromo-Citigroup saga continues. Today's analysis comes from Slate's Jack Shafer, who highlights the Wall Street Journal's cleverly implicit coverage of the story. It and other publications are "writing around" the outright allegation that ousted Citigroup executive Todd Thomson and Bartiromo were more than just friends, writes Shafer. "Having dumped the compost, planted the seed, and fertilized and watered the earth, the Journal leaves it to nobody's imagination what species the flowering Thomson-Bartiromo friendship, relationship, and contact is without actually coming out and writing anything that 1) they can't prove and 2) invites a libel suit. This is the sort of copy a clever lawyer directs reporters to write when they "know" something but can't prove it. Leave it to the reader to assemble the meaning of the facts in their minds, the wise libel attorney tells his clients."

The "Ic" That Won't Subside: What other controversy just won't die? That's right, the "ic" factor presses on. Everyone threw their hats into the ring over whether President Bush calling the "Democratic majority" the "Democrat majority" (sans "ic") during the State of the Union address was just an oversight or an intentional snub. Now, the president has commented on the matter, to National Public Radio: "That was an oversight. I mean, I'm not trying to needle." He added: "I'm not that good at pronouncing words anyway."

Good News For Comedy Central: In a bit of news surely to boost Nielsen ratings for "The Daily Show," Nielsen research will now begin tracking what television programs college students are watching in their dorms. "Until now, college-aged students were only included in Nielsen's ranking if they didn't actually attend college, or when they were home during vacations," writes the AP. The change will probably not pose any increase in ratings for television news, since, as we all know, the kids are probably not watching it.

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Last year, Nielsen Research reported that the State of the Union address roped in 42 million viewers across eight networks -- ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CNN, FNC, MSNBC, and Telemundo. It was a slight increase from the previous year's viewership, which was about 39 million.

A single network raked in 33 million viewers alone that night -- but it wasn't for the president's address. Those 33 million were watching what was on during the hour before the speech – Fox's "American Idol." A lead in show with that many viewers meant that Fox won the day for SOTU viewership.

That also meant the Washington Post's TV critic, (and pretty much every other TV critic in America) Lisa de Moraes had a barrel of laughs in the paper later that week, noting that while "Bush clocked his biggest numbers on the Fox broadcast network, that's not to say he did such a hot job retaining the 'Idol' audience." According to the stats she had, Bush averaged about 9.5 million viewers on Fox ("a lousy 29 percent retention rate, which would get him canceled faster than he could say 'Emily's Reasons Why Not' if he were a TV series," she writes.) By the second half-hour, the audience was down to 6.9 viewers.

In other words,(and this may come as a bit of a shock) the State of the Union address is not a ratings grabber.

Perhaps this year, as everyone (well, everyone in Washington) highlights the president's record-low approval ratings and Congress' growing frustration with the Iraq war plan, we'll see an upswing in viewership. Or maybe, a skeptical public is one that would rather tune out.

"American Idol," is on again this year during the hour before the speech. Re-runs of "Sex and the City" start at 9 pm (same time the speech starts) on TBS.

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Forget for a moment all those predictions of the end of television. Put aside concerns of the increasing number of gadgets and things competing against the small screen. For most of us, it appears, watching television set remains a very popular pastime. In fact, according to a new Nielsen study, we’re watching more TV than ever before. From the Los Angeles Times:

Despite growing competition from the Internet, iPods, cellphones and other new media, Americans are watching more television than ever, according to a report released Thursday by Nielsen Media Research.

The average amount of time that U.S. households had a television set on each day during the yearlong 2005-06 TV season that ended last week increased by three minutes from the year before, to a record of eight hours and 14 minutes, the report said.

The average amount of television watched by an individual viewer was also up by three minutes, to a record four hours and 35 minutes a day.

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On a recent episode of the public radio show This American Life, Alex Blumberg discussed how, growing up, he always assumed that the Nielsen Ratings – the ratings used to measure television viewership – got their name from the fact that all of the viewers sampled shared the last name Nielsen.



“I think I’d figured [as a child] that they’d done some research and found that the name Nielsen, because it was a common name maybe, that seemed to cut across class and economic lines, actually came pretty close to a representative sample,” he said. Twenty years later, he was speaking to someone who said her friend had been selected as a Nielsen family. “Isn’t it weird that they’re all named Nielsen?” Blumberg asked. He was met with an uncomfortably long silence.



The moral of the story? We know less about the Nielsens than we think. (And no, the sample isn’t made of people named Nielsen. The name comes from the much-more-mundane fact that system was developed by Nielsen Media Research.) If you want to go “Inside TV Ratings,” the company has a page on their website that takes you through how it all works. (Blumberg may want to check out the section tagged “The first crucial step? We scientifically select a group of households that mirrors the population at large. Learn how.”

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Here are a few things that caught our attention on a lazy, fall-like Saturday morning:



TVNewser has some interesting angles on the Bill Bennett controversy, including how Fox News is now labeling its “contributor” and an awkward moment between his brother, Bob Bennett, and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.



The flap over Bennett’s comments on race, abortion and crime may remind some of an argument made in the best-selling book, “Freakonomics.” The book’s co-author, Steven Levitt takes to his blog to explain the differences.



In case you missed this yesterday, Nielsen Media Research reported that Americans are watching more television than ever before. For the 2004-2005 TV season, U.S. households watched an average of eight hours and 11 minutes a day. The average individual logged about four hours and 32 minutes each day. (Tip: Lost Remote).



And in case you wondered why the move by the New York Times to charge non-subscribers for online access to their opinion columnists was so roundly panned in the blogosphere, Technorati reveals one reason. It seems as though bloggers really, really like to talk about them. For a good part of the week, Times columnists Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman and David Brooks have held places in the top ten blog searches.

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