August 26, 2009

PTI

Very interesting post over at Sports By Brooks yesterday.  The claim? PTI has surpassed the evening sportscenter in terms of ratings and ad revenue.  You know what, after thinking about it for a minute…

I believe it.

Brooks’ statement,

As head of ESPN on-air conent from 2002-05, Shapiro created some duds, like those lame ESPN movies and Stephen A. Smith, and current ESPN upper management has quite obviously done plenty to distance itself from many of Shapiro’s initiatives. But Shapiro also masterminded many of the net’s signature properties, like the X Games, ESPY Awards and what has become ESPN’s top in-house broadcast property – Pardon The Interruption.

We all remember when PTI debuted. The over-the-top, sometimes nonsensical graphics & countdown clocks, bizarre between commercial look-ins and two well-aged gents no one had heard of outside The District.

Fast forward to today and according to more than one ESPN source, PTI regularly averages more viewers than SportsCenter and also enjoys a higher ad revenue base. And another bizarro Shapiro concoction, Around The Horn, isn’t far behind.

Pretty amazing when you consider the institution SportsCenter has become, and continues to be. But as I’ve pointed out here before, ESPN upper management has taken a lot of the personality out of SportsCenter, apparently leaving the craziness to PTI and ATH. I have heard in the past couple months that ESPN talent execs are indeed trying to bring back more eclectic, assertive voices to the SportsCenter chair, but have had no luck locating the type of talent they’re looking for.

That’s not lip service, from what I’m hearing inside the halls of Bristol, there is indeed going to be bigger personalities on SportsCenter – and soon

Perhaps an early example of that shift in programming philosophy is the new ESPN2 show SportsNation, which is loosely modeled on PTI and ATH. And thus far, revisiting the Shapiro-created show model has paid off, as SN has landed encouraging early ratings.

Now, regardless of the reason of Sports Nation’s high ratings, the proof is clear; the 18 to 35 target demographic wants more interactive, “hip” shows.  Which easily explains why SportsCenter spends most of its time including PTI and SN segments during the Sports Center broadcast.  The only ratings data I could pull on PTI and Around the Horn comes by way of TV by the Numbers (from the week ending August 9th)

Shows NET DAY Time Viewers Live+SD (000)
ROME IS BURNING L ESPN Mon 04:30P-05:00P 965
ROME IS BURNING L ESPN Wed 04:30P-05:00P 600
ROME IS BURNING L ESPN Tue 04:30P-05:00P 592
ROME IS BURNING L ESPN Fri 04:30P-05:00P 487
ROME IS BURNING L ESPN Thu 04:30P-05:00P 469
AROUND THE HORN ESPN Mon 05:00P-05:30P 881
AROUND THE HORN ESPN Wed 05:00P-05:30P 824
AROUND THE HORN ESPN Thu 05:00P-05:30P 673
AROUND THE HORN ESPN Tue 05:00P-05:30P 666
AROUND THE HORN ESPN Fri 05:00P-05:30P 556
PARDON THE INTERRUPTION ESPN Mon 05:30P-06:00P 1,095
PARDON THE INTERRUPTION ESPN Wed 05:30P-06:00P 1,047
PARDON THE INTERRUPTION ESPN Thu 05:30P-06:00P 942
PARDON THE INTERRUPTION ESPN Tue 05:30P-06:00P 896
PARDON THE INTERRUPTION ESPN Fri 05:30P-06:00P 799

Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.

The two interesting things about those ratings?  1. PTI can pull over 1 million live viewers at 5:30 when a lot of working people that would watch the show (myself included) aren’t even home yet and 2. Sports Center can’t pull 1 million live viewers when they recap the day’s sports news and when more people are at home viewing their televisions.

Wow.

Obviously, ESPN isn’t about to dump the evening edition of sportscenter, but they obviously are realizing that the same format that would have worked 5 years ago doesn’t work for today’s “social-media enhanced” audience.  The “boring” media format that worked for years ago doesn’t work now.  Today’s viewers need fancy graphics, interaction, or a utilization of new forms of technology (their may be an underlying argument that they need their news to be dumbed down, but I’ll leave that debate open…) Although truthfully, sports and sports television are in the midst of experiencing something that many thought would never happen (or would happened in a minimal capacity); they’re being forced to adapt based on outside factors, not setting the trends themselves.  The advent of social media, allowing gambling and various gaming forms of advertisements, the recession…Sports is in the process of being transformed and regardless of what any exec tells you, sports has absolutely no control over the transformation.

It will certainly be interesting to see what “sports 2.0″ looks like, once the transformation is complete.

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