Valerie Kuklenski: February 2008 Archives

It's official, according to the Hollywood Reporter: Sunday's Oscars telecast hit rock bottom in viewership.
ABC's publicity mill took more time than usual to release the fast-national results, probably because of the struggle they were having putting lipstick on this pig.
On the heels of early-morning metered market figures that did not bode well, the announcement late Monday proclaimed 64.13 million viewers ages 2+ across the country watched 6 minutes or more of the show. (Of course, at least some of those younger children in the 2+ universe probably sat through Robert Boyle's entire long-winded acceptance speech for his honorary award because they mistakenly thought they were watching home video of their great-grandfather.)
Having put a smear of lucious pink on some bacon on the hoof, ABC closes with this caveat:
"DVR penetration ... has nearly doubled from 13 percent at the same point in 2006, up to more than 22.5 percent currently. ... The only true valid year-to-year comparison would be one based on the Live +7 Day metric, once those stats are released by Nielsen."
Yes, I'll translate. ABC hopes that a lot of us who didn't tune in live on Sunday night will watch the whole bloody broadcast on our TiVos sometime this week, even though we know all the results and will have had plenty of time to watch the show's few compelling moments on the Internet. And ABC hopes that by next Monday, when those Live +7 Day figures surface, even the trades like Variety and Hollywood Reporter will no longer care.

Take small box-office grosses for four out of five best picture nominees, subtract one Golden Globes ceremony and multiply by a protracted writers' strike and you get pretty sucky ratings for Sunday's Oscars.
Preliminary metered-market ratings released by ABC say the show hosted by Jon Stewart averaged a 21.9 household rating and 33 percent share. Must do some more research to determine whether that's a record low. But it isn't looking good. Even in 2003, when the just-started war in Iraq meant more important live-event coverage on CNN, the Academy Awards averaged a 25.5 rating and 37 share.
Even more ominous news comes later in the network's release: L.A. ranked fifth among the top-rated markets for Oscar viewership, behind New York, Chicago, San Francisco and West Palm. I guess that means that Donald Trump's Florida neighborhood is more of an industry town than L.A. is these days.

If you're missing the Joan and Melissa Rivers Oscar red carpet smackdown, check out their online video post mortem. We disagree, however, with their Chia Pet comparison to describe John Travolta's short-short hair. It was definitely 1960s Ken doll fleece.

For your pre-Oscar amusement, Radar Online has posted its RadLibs speechmaking kit. Just go to the page, fill in the appropriate parts of speech (be creative!) and click at the bottom. Up pops your own personal moment in the spotlight (apparently I look a lot like Halle Berry), complete with an allusion to Julia Roberts' chiding of "Mr. Stickman" in the orchestra pit. Enjoy ...

As you can see from the title, I think we need a new subcategory just for people like Joe Francis. The brain trust behind the borderline felonious "Girls Gone Wild" franchise is chilling in a federal penitentiary on tax evasion charges, which has given him plenty of time to fantasize about his next scheme to rip off teen boys and lonely men while taking advantage of looped (and clearly not too bright when sober) young women.
He's releasing a bi-monthly Girls Gone Wild magazine on April 15. It will be sold plastic wrapped, but the announcement says the content will be "PG-13" (as if there were a ratings system for such things) so it can be displayed among other fare aimed at the same audience, like, say, wrestling and video game magazines and "Self Love for Dummies."

As a news junkie I tend to want important information, like, yesterday. But I think I'm ready to advocate for a 5-second delay on the network morning shows.
Some tenders ears had barely cooled off since Diane Keaton casually -- and with immediate regret -- dropped an F-bomb on Diane Sawyer a few weeks ago during an interview on "Good Morning America," when Jane Fonda popped in this morning to the "Today" show with her own impolite language.
In Jane's defense, she was merely citing the title of a monologue in the play "The Vagina Monologues" in response to a question from Meredith Vieira.
The networks may want to look into a delay that would accomodate some snappy edits. Otherwise, Big Brother FCC might step in and mandate harsher measures, forcing them to retitle their shows "Good Yesterday Morning" and "Sometime in the Last 24 Hours."

Fox suits probably are high-fiving their palms off today about the record Super Bowl average viewership of 97.5 million, and they should be pleased.
But this is Monday, and I'm in a glass-half-empty mood, so I'll throw a little water on it all. Sunday's game is very likely the last record viewership for anything that matters.
The game had all the right elements for high viewership: intense team rivalry, major-market fan base for both squads, and that whole underdog Giants vs. undefeated Patriots theme. It had a pair of celeb quarterbacks and the confidence of advertisers paying record prices for spots. It had Nielsen's recently developed ability to estimate viewership in sports bars and other communal sites. And it had what turned out to be a very exciting game that went down to the wire.
Even with all that, even in its final 30 minutes with 105.7 million viewers, the Super Bowl couldn't outdraw the series finale of "M*A*S*H," which attracted 105.9 million on Feb. 28, 1983. If you don't think broadcast is in trouble, there's your answer.