from Amazon
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Won’t someone think of the Eastern seaboard kids?
...the later a game starts and finishes, the larger the audience across all demographics except adults ages 55 and above, who start to tune out after 9 p.m. ET. Additionally, the youngest demographic, 6- to 17-year-olds, surprisingly make up the same proportion of viewers at 8 p.m. as they do at midnight (see charts, pages 38-39), and like their older counterparts, they watch evening postseason games more than comparable contests in the day.
Hard to believe the numbers. However, if you look at the data in the article, it looks like those are the national numbers. Having a kid in California at 12 PM ET (i.e., 9 PM local) doesn’t really answer the question. This is one of those “lies, damned lies, and statistics” ways of trying to make your point. And clearly, this has to be done based on the local time. The parents of the California kid is not going to decide to go to bed, depending on whether it’s sundown in NYC. It cam very well be that the reason the ratings are so high at 11PM ET, is that in the rest of the country, it’s 8PM, 9PM and 10PM.
The article and the quotes in it are horrendously confusing.
According to the article, I think, the numbers they quote ARE based on local time. Someone in the article specifically says that kids ARE Staying up late to watch the game on the East Coast. If that is NOT true then the Nielsen Ratings are flawed or someone is doctoring them.
Obviously, MORE kids would watch these games on the East Coast if the games started a little earlier and less adults would watch on the West Coast. What is also obvious is that the TV Networks have supposedly determined that the best balance is these 8:20 starting times. Whether that is true or not is another story, but the Network Executives seem to think it is true and I would have to believe that they would not make a mistake on something as important as that.
The only legitimate “criticism” of these late starting times are that the Networks should care more about the kids on the East Coast then money, and that is a ridiculous argument. We are not talking about life and death here. While I usually argue that business should sacrifice profit for having some kind of a social conscious, in my opinion, that argument does not apply here.
This quote:
“If it’s true that 12-year-olds are staying up until midnight to watch baseball, shame on the networks and shame on baseball,” Mushnick said. “I don’t know one person whose kid saw the end of any game in the Red Sox’s series when they came back to beat the Yankees [in the 2004 ALCS], and that’s not right.”
Makes absolutely no sense at all. “Shame on the networks” for making kids stay up late to watch the game?” But she says that no kids DO watch the game.
This quote is equally stupid:
Christine Brennan, USA Today columnist and another frequent voice against the late-night scheduling, concurs.
“All the kids I know aren’t watching,” Brennan said. “From talking to their parents and being involved in their lives, I can tell you that the biggest reason they aren’t watching is because the games are on too late.”
Apparently SOME kids ARE watching the games on the EAST Coast. And obviously more would be watching it if the time were earlier. But less would be watching it on the West Coast (I assume because many adults are still at work) if it were earlier.
The whole thing is an incredibly stupid argument. Parents on the East Coast, either let your kids stay up late and watch the game or don’t. Your choice.
If we accomodate the KIDS on the East coast (by starting the game at 7:05 or earlier) then adults would be complaining on the West Coast, right?
Tango, I have no idea what your argument is.