Monthly Archives: February 2018

Black Lightning #5 – Cast Advertisements

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As Black Lightning took a week break, the stars and famous writers of the show are ramping up on advertising. I have mentioned before how the cast of the show has taken a lead role in the advertisement of the new series. We a one week break from airing new episodes, The CW’s star characters and writers posted various advertisements urging their followers to watch the episode live. When viewing different social media platforms, it seems as though Instagram and Twitter are the main tools used by the cast and crew. When averaging the total followers of China Anne McClain, Cress Williams, Nafessa Williams, Christine Adams, and Krondon they alone reach over 4 million people on Instagram.

According to TV by the numbers, the show stays consistent with its 0.5 rating after a week off due to the Winter Olympics. The constant advertisements of the show from the cast and crew seem to aid in the steady viewership of new episodes.

 

Good Girls #5

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Good Girls premiered this Monday at 10pm following the episode of The Voice. It had a strong start with a rating of 1.5 and audience of 5.98 million. Good Girl’s ratings were the top for the time slot beating out the premiere of CBS’s Living Biblically, ABC’s The Good Doctor’s new episode. The combination of The Voice’s high rating of 2.8 in addition to Good Girl’s strong start help NBC win the night. The show has gotten mixed reviews from the audience with a rating of 6.9 on IMDB, 57% rotten tomatoes critic rating and a 71% of the rotten tomato audience liked it. A lot of the critics are discussing the merits of the shows titles and whether or not the show merits it’s sarcastic title.

Life Sentence #5

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With only a few weeks left before the March 7th air date, there has not been much promotion besides what has been shown on their social media accounts. When one is to research the show and the cast, there is only the basic methods of advertising for the show being stated.

  1.  Appearing on Talk Shows
    1. While this is a great way to get the show out there for people to hear about, Life Sentence hasn’t been set up for any shows yet. There has been a few interviews with star Lucy Hale, but nothing of real prominence.
  2.  Social Media
    1. Social media seems to be the only method of advertising being used by the show besides on their own network. Stars are able to reach out to their fans in order for them to get excited for the new show.  While this may work, it isn’t reaching the whole audience demographic, only a small group of fans.
  3. New Releases
    1.  When searching online for updates on the show, it seems to be repeated information, nothing new coming out. It also seems to be mainly the promo videos being shared on multiple websites or links to their social media.
    2. There has been a bit of a break with star Lucy Hale and websites following her journey from her past popular show to this. There have been interviews with her about the change and how she has impacted the shows creation.

Olympic Closing Ceremonies

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The Olympics closing ceremony took place on Saturday, February 24 2018. The event was broadcasted on Sunday, February 25 at 8:00PM on NBC. Some of the program was shortened in order to fit the two-and-a-half-hour time slot. Some of the highlights of the night included a sports recap in the beginning of the show, a montage of medal ceremonies, Jessie Diggins carrying the flag, a 13 year old guitarist, Korean pop superstars, a look forward to the 2022 games in Beijing, and a performance by Martin Garrix. The major issues surrounding the closing ceremonies were the loss in overall ratings and the time change causing a tape delay and shortened content.

 

Programming

 

Prior to the closing ceremony, NBC put on an “Olympic Gold” special, which brought in a rating/share of 1.6/7 and 8.35 million viewers. NBC’s new show A.P. Bio followed the closing ceremonies at 10:30pm. It put up a promising 1.1/5 rating and had an impressive 4.69 million viewers. The Olympics definitely helped A.P. Bio, so it will be interesting to see if the show will hold on its own.

 

Ratings

The closing ceremonies brought in a 2.4/9 rating and 14.87 million broadcast only viewers according to Variety. This is significantly less than the opening ceremonies, which brought in 17.2 million viewers. It is expected for a closing ceremony to have a smaller viewership than the opening ceremony, but overall the Pyeongchang winter Olympics lost viewership by 7% compared to Sochi in 2014. Specifically, Sochi beat Pyeongchang closing ceremony viewership by .4 million. Since viewing habits have changed over the past four years, this is not considered a huge loss. According to the Chicago Tribune, On NBC alone, the Olympic coverage averaged 19.8 million viewers across broadcast and digital platforms, while the combined average for ABC, CBS, and Fox was 9.8 million. That is an 82% advantage, up from a 43% advantage in Sochi and an 8% advantage in Vancouver. These numbers are very pleasing to NBC.

 

Competition

 

Competing shows throughout the night did not come close to beating the Olympics in ratings. “Big Brother: Celebrity Edition” on CBS received a 1.4/5 and 5.18 million viewers. “The Bachelor: The Women Tell All” on ABC received a 1.1/4 and 4.19 million viewers. “The Simpsons” on Fox received a 0.7/3 and 1.81 million viewers. “Ghosted” on Fox received a 0.5/2 rating and 1.21 million viewers. “Family Guy” on Fox received a 0.5/2 rating and 1.31 million viewers. “La to Vegas” on Fox received a 0.4/1 and 1.1 million viewers. “Shark Tank” on ABC received a 0.8 and 3.12 million viewers. “NCIS: Los Angeles” on CBS received a 0.4/2 and 3.42 million viewers.

 

Promotions

Promotions for the closing ceremonies revolved strictly around promoting NBC only content. The network promoted shows across all categories such as news, entertainment, and even special events. To begin, NBC News teased an Ivanka trump interview regarding the Olympics, and said that more would be shown on NBC Today the following morning. There were promotions for the Olympic Channel, The Voice, Good Girls, AP Bio, Chicago Med, and the special event Jesus Christ Superstar. Interestingly, the network showed three spots promoting the NBC Snapchat account. This shows that NBC was conscious to hit traffic in all areas.

 

Advertisers/Sponsors

 

Immediately following content before cutting to commercial break, NBC highlighted its main sponsors. Some of these companies included McDonalds, Intel, Toyota, and Google. These companies paid more money for these sponsorships because they attract more attention than a regular commercial. The commercials that aired during the event were consistent with NBC’s and the Olympic committee’s values. The network showed commercials that appealed to the 18-49 demographic because that is the program’s most successful target. The network chose commercials that were family oriented and appealed to everyone. The companies with the most spots were Toyota, Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield, Samsung Galaxy X9, Coca Cola, and Hershey’s. Visa used its two spots to cross market with NBC, using the Olympians as the stars of the commercial. There were three local commercials during the program. Two were for Adirondack furniture in Syracuse, and the other was for Laserview of CNY. According to the Chicago Tribune, NBC made a profit off this Olympics with $920 million in national sales. Sochi only brought in $800 million.

Station 19 #5

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With the Station 19 crossover premiering on March 1, they are still three weeks away from the premiere. The twitter account has only gotten 2,000 followers in the last 3 weeks, bringing it to a total of 8,815 twitter followers. On February 23 it was retweeting all the stars of the show posting about how there is only one month left to the premiere. Besides their minimal social media presence, there has been nothing on the talk show circuits. Using the hashtag #TGITCrossover, there has only been conversation about the How To Get Away with Murder and Scandal episode, nothing with Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19. Hopefully after this crossover episode airs, Station 19 will start publicizing the premiere of their show more and start doing interviews.

A.P. Bio #5

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Shaking Up the Schedule:

NBC announced this past a week a huge disruption to its already unique introduction to the series. The series aired a “preview” episode on Thursday March 1st at 9:30pm before taking a break until after the olympics concluded. (During this time the first 4 episodes of the show were available on Hulu).

This week though could get very confusing for viewers trying to follow the show. Last night following the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics the show premiered its second episode. This was very much out of its normal time slot. Additionally this Thursday the show was supposed to premiere into regular programming Thursdays at 9:30pm but now it will air its third episode at 8:30 pm and the fourth episode at 9:30pm. Then next week on March 8th the show will permanently move into an 8:30 time slot.

I can imagine that changing the schedule of a show around its first few weeks is critical and can easily cost a program viewers. The question here is if the decision was because NBC is already concerned about ratings for the show and trying to find a way to boost the ratings up before it hits regular programming?

Splitting Up Together #4

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With 1 month before the show airs I have seen very minimal promotion of the show beyond what I have already discussed such as the show twitter, or the show trailer. Here I will look at what the show has not been doing but should be to promote itself:

  1. Cast Appearing on Late Night
    1. A great way to promote a show is talk about it on shows people already watch. This has yet to happen with the show.
  2. Promoting on Social Media
    1. Beyond twitter (where you dont see promotion unless you follow the show) I have seen no promotions. A great thing the show should do is sponsor ads on instagram or on Snapchat as I have seen done by other shows I follow
  3. Release updates
    1. If I google “Splitting Up Together news” most of the articles are from November or even further back. The show has not been keeping itself up to date.

The Resident #5

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“The Resident’s” biggest competitor this season is ABC’s new medical drama “The Good Doctor”. The show follows Shaun Murphy, a young surgeon with autism and Savant syndrome, is recruited into the surgical unit of a prestigious hospital. The show is the #2 show on network television this season, behind NBC’s “This Is Us”. It has received critical acclaim. Freddie Highmore has been nominated for a Golden Globe for best performance by an actor in a television series – drama. He was also nominated for a Critics Choice Award for best actor in a drama series.

“The Good Doctor” has exceeded expectations. The pilot on September 25 put up a rating of 2.19 and over 11 million viewers for the 18-49 demographic. The shocking part is the show’s ability to keep those ratings. The show’s biggest viewership deficit was 8.17%, but then went back up the next week 12.49%. While it has not been officially picked up for a second season, it is a shoe in for renewal. Overall, “The Resident” is no threat to “The Good Doctor”.

Alex, Inc. (5)

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Earlier this week, ABC released a short promo for Alex, Inc. titled “Raising a Family.” Four days later, the video has slightly over 7,000 views on the verified TVPromos channel on YouTube. The montage shows Zach Braff’s character trying to balance family life with his new, unproven business initiative. Here, it appears that ABC is trying to market the show towards a familial audience, as it tries to relate to viewers who struggle with the challenges of raising children. Such a tactic may prove valuable, as the show can simultaneously market to families and those who are interested in technology. By having a show that simultaneously focuses on two distinct subjects, there is more flexibility to appeal to audiences with broad interests. If the program experiences success at ABC, it can partially be attributed to the fact that the show’s concept and marketing has engaged both podcast devotees and families.

Black Lightning – The Affects of the Winter Olympics #4

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As the Winter Olympics continues to air, networks are making the decision to hold off on airing new episodes of their premiere shows. The CW is among this group that chose to skip airing a new episode of Black Lighting for this week (February 20th). Black Lighting had a drop in rating’s last week (February 13th) from 0.8 to 0.5 for viewers 18-49. The Flash also experienced a similar drop that same night. The decision to skip this week is a good strategy for The CW to maintain good ratings of their premiere shows/episodes.

On the other hand, The CW has turned their social media aim towards advertising other ways to watch Black Lighting. This may allow for the show to continue to gain viewers on other streaming sites and applications. Roku, Amazon Fire Tv, and The CW app are just a few of the services highlighted on The Cw’s social media pages.  With special programming continuing of the Winter Olympics, The CW is using their opportunity to advertise the other streaming sites that allow for viewers to watch their shows.