It’s all about the demographic, Mr. President
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- July
- 24
The Fox network’s decision to opt not to air President Obama’s health care press conference Wednesday night paid off big time, for Fox, anyway.
More people tuned in to hear Obama’s pitch for a health care overhaul, but he had a 10-channel advantage. In all, 24.7 million people caught the press conference. But as any network ad buyer will tell you, it’s all about the demographic.
Viewers flocked to Cat Deeley and guest host Ellen Degeneres in droves, particularly the highly sought viewers aged 18-49. Broadcasting & Cable breaks down the hard numbers…
Dance averaged a 2.8/10 and 7.3 million viewers. The presser averaged a 1.3/4 across the three networks in the 8 p.m. hour, with ABC leading the way at 1.5/5, followed by NBC (1.4/5) and CBS (0.9/3). NBC’s coverage drew the most viewers with 6.4 million.
Now, of course, Obama’s not selling ads, so he only cares about the raw numbers, and he reached a far wider audience of his target demographic: voters, health care consumers, etc.
But Fox only cares about what its network rivals are drawing, and it came away the clear winner by going with its own reality show in lieu of the President’s. What’s more, parent company News Corp. aired the press conference on Fox News Channel and Fox Business Channel, bumping up the President’s numbers and possibly helping those outlet’s ratings cause.
Now that it’s all played out, feel free to vote at Remote Access’s Readers Poll to your right, where we ask, “Did Fox make the right call?”
This entry was posted
on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 10:27 am by Brian Howard.
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