OK, there are going to be naysayers to my analysis of why the PBA Tournament of Champions telecast Sunday generated the 2nd highest rating since the new era of the PBA began in 2000.
Kelly Kulick becoming the first woman to with a PBA Tour event is the first thing that will come to most everyone's mind.
But after 33 years in broadcasting as a producer, anchor, reporter and manager, I had to assess audience data with my job, so I now will share with you more factors that contribute to a show's success or failure, analysis you will not read anywhere else.
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First analysis: The telecast did NOT compete directly against NFL telecasts. The AFC championship game started an hour after Kulick's win. Therefore a lot of television sets were tuned to ESPN instead of FOX or CBS. Remember, Nielsen measures its rating on the number of television sets - not the number of people watching.
Too often, I've seen TV sets in bowling centers on Sundays dialed into the NFL. Success in TV is based on viewer habit. Watching NFL games is a habit. Watching NFL games is "must-watch" TV. Many times I've had to ask bowling centers to switch. They were in the habit of rarely switching. This past Sunday, ESPN stood out because there was no need to switch channels.
Second analysis: The key element in building viewers in television is to have a strong lead-in show and then force the audience to stay with you and not turn the channel. ESPN's NFL show leading into the PBA telecast is a strong lead-in. And with no NFL game competiting against the Tournament of Champions, viewers held the channel and didn't switch. If you don't think this is important, ask NBC-TV stations what their 10 p.m. (Central Time) news ratings were with Jay Leno's show as the lead-in. Most reported a drop of 25% because of that failed experiment.
Third analysis: Here's where Kulick's appearance paid off with added numbers. The Internet. Word of mouth. The PBA is at a disadvantage because it rarely gets advance publicity in sport sections and local sportscasts. Heck, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports section, edited by my close friend Don Reed didn't include the Detroit PBA tournaments in the TV listings because the shows were taped! That's how picky they are. So the Kulick "buzz" was real and real people got the word out.
Perspective facts: The PBA Tournament of Champions earned a 1.5 Nielsen Survey Index. That's a very good number. It's the 2nd biggest audience in ten years. Simon Sez beginning in 2002 wrote the PBA's real target average should be a 1 rating. That's a little over 1 million U.S. households.
Past years have seen Nielsen season averages of .7-.9. The NHL as a comparison has generated some ratings of .5, including St. Louis which is an NHL city. So a .8 isn't bad. A 1.0 is better. A 1.5 is outstanding. A 2.0 would be off the chart.
Prior to the Tournament of Champions, the PBA telecast of the World Championship (live) Dec. 13 and the Earl Anthony tournament earlier this month each earned a .6 rating. The Kulick show more than doubled the previous two telecasts combined. That's how big her win was for the PBA.
Because the remaining shows for the year don't have the NFL to compete against. All it needs a buzz each week like we saw last weekend, and perhaps the PBA can get to that 1.0 Nielsen average for the whole season.
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