Ratings Report: Syndicated “Fifth Grader” Opens Strong
We’ve got a lot of syndicated ratings in for the week ending September 27th. The show I was most interested in seeing the results for, the new syndicated edition of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? have finally come in and it’s looking very healthy. Its first week on the air scored a 1.5 rating which is right around what Deal or No Deal started at. Deal started strong but lost its steam at the end of the season and hasn’t been able to gain it back yet. We’ll see what Fifth Grader looks like in a few weeks. I really don’t know how well it can do in the long run if it’s aired as much as it is. I mean the show airs in double-runs (twice a day) in most of the country to start. Then you have CMT airing an hour of it a night, and MyNetwork airing another hour one day a week. How many episodes did they tape? I’d have to imagine reruns will set in rather quickly. And as we’ve said before the show is much better in daytime than in primetime. It’s amazing how the networks take a crappy primetime game and turn it decent in daytime.
The old standbys of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! were up nicely with the new season in full gear. Wheel is up 8% to a 6.5 and Jeopardy! up 6% to 5.2. The shows still get ratings that networks especially like NBC would dream for at this point which is stunning. Jeopardy! looks awesome this season from the videos I’ve seen. I really don’t watch Wheel more than maybe once a month at most so I’m not 100%, but from what I’m reading it looks like the show has actually been a little bit cheaper this season. I hate to say a win of $10,000 to $15,000 isn’t much but Wheel gave away nauseating amounts of cash in the past. Am I going crazy or does it seem a bit cheaper this season?
The other shows are hanging in there nicely. Family Feud went up to a 1.2, and with a new syndicated show entering the market and word of some crappy new time slots in some markets, that’s pretty good. The shocker is that Deal or No Deal just stuck at a 1.2 even with the season going on for some time now. People just don’t care that much about it right now I guess? If Deal can stick around at a 1.2 rating with its far larger budget, we can see Feud around as well. If they can keep this up we’ll almost positively get a fifth season with host John O’Hurley. The changes have been received very well so that’s good. Who Wants to be a Millionaire is up 5% at a 2.3. We’ll have a larger story on the show and the Tournament of 10 tomorrow, which is why we don’t have much commentary for it.
We’re trying to hunt down figures for Let’s Make A Deal so if anything pops up let us know!
From what I've noticed, network daytime ratings are even more difficult to come across. I rarely see ratings for soaps, "Price", or "The View"…
Great to hear that the syndie shows are hanging tough.
Wheel is much cheaper this season. All the top dollar value wedges are next to Bankrupts, even one of the mystery wedges is next to a Bankrupt. Plus, they keep the 2nd Bankrupt on the wheel throughout the show. So, yeah. It is cheaper.
In addition, the Jackpot Round has been moved to the 1st round, with a top dollar value of $2500.
Not only that, the set really looks dull without the cars they've use to offer in the bonus round. Maybe they've finally "figured it out" budget-wise.
As far as 5th Grader goes, CMT had country music-themed shows while the MyNet ones have various celebrity episode & themed shows tied in somewhat. Good thinh my MyNet affiliate only carries the single run version at 10 :30 PM.
According to an air schedule posted at GSF, 160 eps of 5th Grader were taped. I've been keeping track of them, and with the double run in my 100+ market, and with the double run on CMT, and with 2 new eps on MyTV Tuesdays, as of today (the third week of the show, 59 of these 160 eps have already been shown.
My question: Which season of DOND is MyTV airing? My market is not airing it this season, and the MyTV run looks like season 1 (simply because I don't see the union logo in the credit roll).
IIRC, MyNet shows are now being thrown into the syndicated ratings (not network), so 5th Grader's ratings may be slightly inflated (or deflated) by how it's doing on MyNet. As far as daytime ratings, I've noticed that ratings for soaps usually come out two weeks after the episodes in questions air, so we may get early LMAD numbers around 10/17-19.
To Patrick: According to Wikipedia, it is from this season. I don’t know why the union logo isn’t on their version, but then again, it’s not on the credit rolls of Jerry Springer, Maury, or Steve Wilkos.
As for Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader, they’re probably counting the episodes from CMT and MNTV, since the latter is now considered a programming service rather than a major network.
I don't think people watch My Network TV for the network. All I watch is SmackDown and the network doesn't even use a bug on its network programing. Sometimes some shows don't use unions, there are ways to get around it (Oprah doesn't use any union at all). I doubt they are counting CMT, that is strictly cable.
On the other hand, the advertisers probably get separate ones for obvious reasons—they aren't even showing the same episodes the same day.
I think maybe WoF producers realized they wouldn't get lower ratings for having less money won. We've been in an era where a gross amount of money has been given away, bottom line. And they may feel the hurt from giving away the million last year, they probably thought to themselves it would take ten for that to happen.
To BMSprint: My Network TV never used a bug in its 3 years on the air simply because they wanted to be different from any other network and allow affiliates to use their bugs (and, if you noticed, Fox displays its bug for just a minute when a show is coming on or coming back from commercial break). I’m thinking the same thing about Wheel of Fortune. They feel as if noone would notice that the big money wedges are right beside the Bankrupt wedge.
Here, FOX's logo is on all network shows, and MNT's content has no bug at all while the local content on the station tends to use the local's bug.
This is off-topic. Could someone start an on-line petition, to get the last season of The Moment of Truth shown on FOX??
youtube -X4_GwpbUYY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X4_GwpbUYY youtube]