The Media Notepad: Bears don’t deliver for Amazon Prime

Also: prime-time’s future debated; Pluto takes streaming lead  You wonder if Amazon has a return policy for defective football games: Much like the teams on the field, the October 13 edition of Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football was completely forgettable. The newly renamed Washington Commanders played the Chicago Bears on a 40-degree night and viewers figured the game between two […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: “It’s not you, it’s me”

WPWR-CW breakup illustrates how some affiliate partnerships don’t work The major networks have enjoyed long, prosperous relationships with their affiliates. For example, Milwaukee’s WTMJ, St. Louis’ KSDK, and Cincinnati’s WLWT each has enjoyed a long relationship with NBC dating back to the late 1940s. CBS and New Orleans’ WWL have been partners since 1957. And ABC and Dallas’ WFAA go […]

Swearin’ Super Bowl Sunday

  Super Bowl XLVII down from last year, but still pulls in an audience; CBS to be investigated for F-bomb; and so is WMVP for unrelated incident The Super Bowl matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers drew a huge audience on Sunday – but not as high as the two previous Super Bowls. According to Nielsen […]

One for the record books

Courtesy: New Orleans Times-Picayune Super Bowl XLIV between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts brought down one of television’s most durable records. The game drew an astonishing 106.5 million viewers on CBS – breaking the record set by the February 28, 1983 episode of M*A*S*H titled Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen, which closed out the series’ eleven-season run. It […]

Football Championship Sunday draws big

Blackhawks a big draw in Canada over the weekend Even though three of the four teams who participated in last Sunday’s NFL Conference Championship games came from smaller markets, the ratings were certainly big enough. The NFC Championship Game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints drew a whopping 58 million viewers, the most for a NFC Championship […]

Follow up: Is Leno killing late local news?

Remember back last December when yours truly wrote how stripping The Jay Leno Show was a creative counter-programming idea? I think I might want to retract that statement. Since it debuted September 14, The Jay Leno Show has been a hot topic of debate in television circles across the country – especially in newsrooms, where Leno leads in to late […]

More July numbers

Buffalo: CBS affiliate WIVB-TV and independent WNLO continue to dominate news viewing, according to Nielsen numbers for the July sweeps. WIVB won 5, 6, and 11 p.m. news ratings, while WNLO scored a 6.3 rating at 10 p.m. for its news – among the best in the country. NBC affiliate WGRZ-TV did pull a surprise in the morning news race, […]