So maybe the ratings are down?
I reported previously how an article in The New York Times stated that the ratings for the The View remained up after Rosie O’Donnell’s departure. That article specifically said that while Rosie was there, the ratings were up 17% over the previous season in the same time period. The article claimed that in the first two weeks after her departure, the ratings were still “nearly a half million viewers” more than the previous year in that time period. The article said that the ratings remained 16% greater than the previous year.
Now Fox News is reporting that since Rosie’s departure, The View has lost over 400,000 viewers per day.
Indeed, “The View” suffered a 13 percent decline in household ratings, and a 9 percent decline in overall ratings during the combined weeks of June 4 and 11 compared with Rosie’s last two weeks.
Here are some stats: The week of May 21, Rosie’s last week (even though no one knew it), the show had an average of 3.8 million viewers a day. But the week of June 11, the ratings were down to 3.35 million viewers a day.
I do not pretend to be a mathematician or statistician, so maybe some of my readers can do the calculations for me. Is it possible for both sets of numbers to be correct? Could The View be down 400,000 viewers per day and still be up 16% over last year? Is this just a case of manipulating the same numbers to have the outcome desired by the writer? Or is one of these articles just completely wrong?
Rosie O’Donnell, The View, television ratings, New York Times, Fox News
June 26th, 2007 at 11:23 am
ARTICLE: The article claimed that in the first two weeks after her departure, the ratings were still “nearly a half million viewers” more than the previous year in that time period. The article said that the ratings remained 16% greater than the previous year.
Note: numbers are totally made up and only for explanatory purposes.
I interpret the article to say that while Rosie was there she built viewership by ALOT. When she left, a significant number of viewers left -but not all of them. So if Rosie increased viewership by 50,000 viewers, and 10,000 left when she left, there were be a signfiicant drop when she left, and an overall increase in viewership compared to the previous year.
June 26th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
The Fox article also mentions that The Price Is Right did indeed make her an offer, a big one at that, that she refused. Haven’t seen any official word from The Price Is Right folks on this, though. Don’t know how reliable that Fox website entertainment reporter is. It’ll be interesting to see how the Fox cable news “reporters” present the story.
Is it possible the stats about viewership have been spun or deliberately misunderstood because of negotations she has been in, or may or may not be in, with not only The Price Is Right but other networks? If Fox is trying to woo her, it would be to their benefit to mention how The View’s ratings tanked after she left. There have been rumors of a show on Fox with her pitted against Hannity (which she said on her blog she wouldn’t do).
In any event, I’m eager to read why the NYT got it wrong–if indeed they did. Who knows?
June 26th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Ratings can be interpreted many ways. Interestingly, I always thought that the article from the NYT was a pr stunt in a way for the View to hang on to Viewers or lure some back. Fox isn’t normally a place to get unbias news but Roger Friedman has lately been the one that goes against normal Fox spin. He is the same one that gave Michael Moore’s Sicko a positive review.
On the math front, it is indeed possible for the show to have lost Viewers since Rosie left and still be up from the previous year. In a way, it is a half full/empty cup way of interpreting. One says the ratings are down since Rosie left. The other says that ratings are up from this time last year. Both statements can be true.
June 29th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Glad to see that even Rosie’s defenders ignore her demand not to watch Fox (even though FNC is unfair, unreliable, and decidedly unbalanced in almost every broadcast).
June 29th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
ronnie, who exactly are the defenders who are ‘ignoring Rosie’s demands and watching Fox’? And why would you assume that a person who does not watch Fox are doing so because of Rosie? Or are you doing the same thing you accused others of doing: generalizing and speculating?
June 29th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
“who exactly are the defenders who are ‘ignoring Rosie’s demands and watching Fox’?”
The people on this blog who have defended Rosie and cited Fox sources.
“And why would you assume that a person who does not watch Fox are doing so because of Rosie?”
You have created a charge I did not make. I never said that people who don’t watch Fox are not doing so because of Rosie. I said that it was heartening to see that, despite Rosie’s many criticisms of Fox on television and on her blog, her fans were able to consult Fox sources and cite whatever they felt was credible.
“Or are you doing the same thing you accused others of doing: generalizing and speculating?”
No. QED
June 29th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
‘The people on this blog who have defended Rosie and cited Fox sources.’
Citing a Fox source does not mean one actually watches the Fox news channel. I have seen this story or article on different message boards as well as other news articles. This does not mean I watched Fox to see it.
‘I said that it was heartening to see that, despite Rosie’s many criticisms of Fox on television and on her blog, her fans were able to consult Fox sources and cite whatever they felt was credible.’
No that is not what you said. You posted: ‘Glad to see that even Rosie’s defenders ignore her demand not to watch Fox’. Big difference. The first certainly infers that people are watching Fox despite your assertion that Rosie demand them not to.
RFE