I get both amazed and agitated when I notice what seems to stick beyond the usual lifecycle of a few hours in this world of instant gratification and entitled ADD sufferers who have made sober-curiosity and mushroom/cannabis elixirs at $10 a can ubiquitous enough for even someone as seasoned as moi to be aware that it’s at bare minimum significant enough for me to be aware of. For the very same reason that I simply can’t embrace our cultural obsession with flamin’ hot Cheetos I try and dismiss these kind of noisy obsessions when they play out on social platforms. My ever-challenged stomach literally can’t take it without throwing up.
I’m particularly bemused when I continue to see the degree of consternation and dismay that has been playing out over l’affaire Colbert which we mused about a couple of dozen hours after we learned he and CBS were getting a divorce. We’ve even seen some relatively high engagement levels on the few platforms we inhabit and thanks to the graciousness of my far more popular and taller Flushing-native media expert Marc Berman today’s PROGRAMMING INSIDER will hopefully add to that total this morning. He takes some Fridays off these days, just like every late night talk show host does. I’m even going against my own better instincts and utilizing the exact same image we used in our earlier musing because, hey, why argue with the facts that shows if something is working or not?
That’s something that apparently an awful lot of otherwise rational people can’t seem to do even in light of some revelations from some far more auspiced folks with zero ties to right-wing media that essentially echo a lot of what I mused about in my apparently feeble attempt to bring some sort of objectivity to this apparent national nightmare. The ASSOCIATED PRESS’ David Bauder dropped a well-composed and even-handed recap on Saturday that included this observation from a quite auspiced person who actually looks at numbers for a living:
Networks and streamers spent roughly $70 billion on entertainment shows and $30 billion for sports rights last year, said Brian Wieser, CEO of Madison & Wall, an advertising consultant and data services firm. Live sports is the most dependable magnet for viewers and costs for its rights are expected to increase 8% a year over the next decade. With television viewership declining in general, it’s clear where savings will have to come from.
Wieser said he does not know whether Colbert’s show is profitable or not for CBS and parent company Paramount Global, but he knows the direction in which it is headed. “The economics of television are weak,” he said.
PUCK’s Matt Belloni used his high-ticketed paywall to do a fairly deep dive of his own in his unique swashbuckling style. Fortunately for the cash-strapped among us there are generous souls like DARING FIREBALL’s John Gruber who gave us the ability to share one of Belloni’s most balanced insights:
Nobody can know for sure. All I can tell you is what I’m hearing. Several sources at both CBS and Skydance insist the decision was based on economics, not politics. After all, if this was about appeasing Trump, they argue, Cheeks would have pulled Colbert off the air ASAP rather than giving him 10 more months in the chair. “Trust me, there’s no conspiracy,” a very good source close to Colbert told me tonight. Still, two other people with deep ties to CBS and Late Show suspect otherwise. After all, when a network decides that a show is too expensive, executives typically go to the key talent and ask them to take pay cuts, fire people, or otherwise slash costs. That didn’t happen here — though with Colbert said to be making between $15 million and $20 million per year, a pay cut wouldn’t have solved the problem on its own. And given the company’s willingness to fold to Trump, there’s no reason for you or me to think they would stand up to any political pressure, or resist any specific demand (which, of course, is the reason to not settle frivolous litigation…). If Chris McCarthy, Cheeks’s counterpart on the cable TV side, cancels The Daily Show in the next couple weeks, I think we’ll have a good idea what’s going on. But for now, I cautiously (and skeptically) believe that this was mostly an economic decision.
Belloni was also given a prominent guest chair on his THE TOWN partner Bill Simmons’ eponymous weekly podcast that usually goes to the basketball-obsessed Ryen Russillo (traveling through Europe again, I suppose) or the pointspread-addicted Cousin Sal (football training camps are just opening). It was a spirited volley between two massive brains and egos, but even Simmons took in the facts that Belloni’s sources provided while they both predicted that there’s a great chance that tonight’s DAILY SHOW might reignite this whole powder keg yet again depending upon how open and honest Jon Stewart chooses–or is allowed–to be.
And crikey, even MSNBC’s resident relative voice of reason Joe Scarborough offered a few crumbs of sanity to his otherwise sky-is-falling minions, as THE WRAP’s “Rocky” Harris reported:
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough admitted that while the economic vigor it takes to uphold traditional late night shows has changed over the years, the timing of Stephen Colbert’s firing from CBS’ “The Late Show” is a bit off…”The economics of the late night shows just didn’t make the kind of sense that it’s made for the past 50 years through Jack Paar, the age of [Johnny] Carson, of course [David] Letterman, you go on and on,” Scarborough reflected on Friday’s “Morning Joe.” “So the the economics were making less and less sense, but the timing of this actually is terrible, and it’s terrible because you had the settlement with Donald Trump, and then you had Colbert and Jon Stewart criticizing that decision. And then a week later they’re saying, ‘Oh, unfortunately we don’t have the money to continue this.’
That’s about where I come out, and yet, you wouldn’t believe how inflammatory supposed “friends” have been regarding this conclusion. For the umpteenth time for anyone actually paying attention, I am not oblivious to the optics and the intense desire on the part of Fat Orange Jesus to claim another head for his hunting wall. But as Belloni detailed in his tete-a-tete with Simmons there are timings related to contractual negotiations not only with Colbert but the other producers and writers that make up his deep and decently paid staff. Terrible timing indeed, but necessary. Even Scarborough has been around enough executive suites to know that–and I know I have been.
Moreover, I’m familiar enough with the numbers and trends that CBS’ “leadership” is referencing to know that, for a change, not everything they’re allowing themselves to be quoted in a statement with is pure bullsh-t. I know the actual viewership numbers and I know what they mean. And I also know where to get others that can actually answer the seminal question of exactly who is watching THE LATE SHOW as well as pretty much anything else on the network or in the daypart.
Among the many quivers in Nielsen’s bow is an array of reports that fall under the category Nielsen Advanced Audiences. As they tout on their own website:
With Nielsen Advanced Audiences, marketers can bring their own audience data across the entire cross-media planning and measurement lifecycle, enabling them to move from “I think” to “I know” and meet audiences where they are. Leverage from planning to measurement. Combine and explore data sets, including your own first-party data, to define an advanced audience and use it throughout the entire campaign workflow. Design customized, high-impact ad campaigns that engage the ideal audience at the right time.
Nielsen routinely creates estimates for audiences–including demographic breaks– by zip code and county for local stations to utilize to better target advertisers seeking to reach their most viable sales targets. You know what other entity captures data with that granularity? Election boards.
Yes, you can fuse those data sets together with a more-than-decent degree of confidence. And from there, you can use Nielsen’s other custom studies methodologies, including their duplications over time and a schedule, to determine how much actual audience is common between two points. We’ve mused about that on several occasions regarding FOX NEWS and their apparent indifference or reluctance to conduct a simple analysis whose results might have diffused or at least mitigated January 6th, especially in light of how they chose to report it in the waning months of 2020. Had they done that, they might be about $787 million more to the good than they are today.
Do you think knowing if Colbert’s audience decline is actually being driven by those who may have voted red might be clickbait-worthy? Do you think knowing if the drop-off from a late news lead-in is disproportionately due to folks who voted for Trump last fall–or even farther back if one wants to look? Do you think knowing if THE LATE SHOW truly has a “bluer” profile than THE PRICE IS RIGHT might shut up some of the Chicken Littles out there that think that that liberal Drew Carey might be next in the crosshairs of the fascist-in-chief–as some more unhinged folks seemed to insist was a possibility?
I, for one, do. I also know plenty of folks with equal, if not better, capacities to dig into data who share my passion for letting numbers and facts dominate conversations whenever possible. Some of them built pretty comfortable lives and existences on it. At one time, so did I.
It just seems to be harder than ever to get those in charge right now to actually want to know such truths, or at least be convinced it’s worth the investment to pursue it. My Nielsen sources confirm these studies aren’t cheap, and further insist that they’re not in all that much of a negotiating mood these days given how indifferent their clients tend to be about data. Or how disemboweled even the ones that do want to commission such studies are by their increasingly budget-conscious and big picture-unconscious bosses have become.
But those same sources confess that any platform with a large first party data set of their own could easily find ways to fuse their data with that of election boards to actually answer those above questions at least relative to their own content. No, the viewership of shows like COLBERT on Paramount Plus isn’t as large or in demographic concert with what Nielsen tells us CBS’ is. But it’s a starting point. And, moreover, the Paramount team–or their brethren at Peacock or Hulu–could conduct the same exercise with other late night shows that are undoubtedly going to be in the crosshairs given the amount of attention this consternation has provoked–if only among no other significant constituency than investors.
But that all assumes that they actually want to know facts rather than live and die by their own polarized opinions regardless of how valid they may or not be. Which, of course, is the exact same behavior that “our favorite President” extols, especially on lazy Sundays when he’s taking a virtual victory lap over just about everything under the sun. And no matter how disparate your own views may or not be from his, you ostrich-like CEOs need to know your reluctance to even want to know the truth is merely perpetuating the exact sort of disconnect and tumult that is making all of our lives crazier and directly impacting your bottom line.
You need to channel your inner Scully and Mulder at some point. As they used to insist, the truth is out there somewhere. Some of us can actually lead you to it if you can just get over your fear of finding out.
Until next time…