Opinion: MSNBC re-airing Countdown at 10pm?
ICN got emails from MSNBC viewers asking what was up with the Countdown 10pm repeat last night? As I got these emails after 10pm, I didn’t see this repeat myself. The obvious question they had was, “Is this permanent?”. The answer is, I don’t know. NBC/MSNBC has invested a lot of time, effort, and money expanding its long form programming department, which is bearing fruit with Richard Engel’s “War Zone Diary” and Robert Bazell’s “Wounds of War”. To now undercut that by airing a Countdown re-run two hours after the original doesn’t make a lot of sense.
That said, Countdown is MSNBC’s ratings’ leader. And the notion of airing your highest rated program in primetime twice to jack up your channel’s overall ratings would not be unprecedented (see: HLN; Grace, Nancy). This may be an experiment to see what Olbermann does to the ratings both at 10pm and for primetime overall.
Note too that “Wounds of War” has been pushed back to an 11pm airtime this week and not the usual 10pm airing which premieres on MSNBC usually get. That’s a statement of some significance. The question is how significant?
spud, brian stelter gets paid by msnbc so i’m sure he can clear up what’s going on for you.
Comment by Yolanda — March 27, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
The ‘repeat’ makes sense, although I think 11pm would be better. I think of these repeats more as “West Coast feeds”. Countdown should do well.
Comment by Grampa D — March 27, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
Don’t the ratings of the third airing of O’Reilly’s show at something like 4 a.m. crush Olbermann’s “ratings” at 8 p.m.?
Comment by Tom — March 27, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
More likely KO’s repeat was getting killed by the Hannity and Combs repeat at 12 but moving it to get killed by Greta doesn’t make any more since.
Comment by mlong — March 27, 2007 @ 1:39 pm
Look at poster number 3 people. I await the howls of outrage that greet every post by ‘elmonica’ because this Tom is certainly one stuck record (i’m not holding my breath though).
Comment by Mr A — March 27, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
MSNBC doesn’t have anyplace to go but up in that time period. They are currently struggling to keep up with the Nancy Grace repeat. There will probably be a slight ratings increase in the time period thanks to KO. But, Greta and AC will remain the programs to watch at that hour.
Comment by Scott — March 27, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
#5 This thread is about Dobermann so I see no problem with Tom’s post. If he mentions Dobermann on every other post then yeah it’s repetitive.
Comment by Lurker — March 27, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
Listen you cry babies - take your hypocrisy elsewhere. I have had to smack Fox News groupies more than once for turning an unrelated thread into an Olbermann discussion. This is one example
Comment by elmonica — March 27, 2007 @ 3:47 pm
elmonica, of course the only time it’s inappropriate to veer off-topic is if it relates to Fox “News”. If it goes off topic and there are ways to take additional shots at Olbermann, then it’s absolutely okay. See how that works? :)
Comment by Shaun — March 27, 2007 @ 4:06 pm
^
One of the biggest cry babies here puahahahahaha. You must be a very miserable person to come here everyday spouting your FNC BS.
Comment by Lurker — March 27, 2007 @ 4:12 pm
El, you’re been smacked down, refuted, exposed and justifiably ridiculed for almost every ridiculous post you’ve ever put on here.
Keep up the great work though. We enjoy it!
Comment by bigred — March 27, 2007 @ 4:17 pm
Yes and I can see the way you stalk commenters on this board that you are a sick person Lurker.
Comment by elmonica — March 27, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
^
Huh? Hahahaha, I’m just reading topics here and it seems you come in spouting your FNC BS in almost every one of them so I have to smack you down. No stalker here lol.
Comment by Lurker — March 27, 2007 @ 4:55 pm
To the topic - I wouldn’t push back “Wounds of War” for a Countdown rerun at 10pm. They should stick with original programming and head into reruns at midnight on.
I wonder if MSNBC is testing this out to see if Countdown could become a lead-in of sorts for “The Daily Show” fans.
Comment by FishOil — March 27, 2007 @ 4:55 pm
Check out the ratings on TVN. I’d say the first night of that experiment filed miserably.
Comment by Alison — March 27, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
I think Stelter screwed up somewhere in the ratings for Monday. Im not saying those wont be the numbers, but Id like to know how Nancy Grace has a demo number of 296000, but only like 460,000 viewers. That would actually make absolutely no sense. Just like the other day, he had Nancy grace with a demo number of 96000, but 946000 or so. He hasnt been doing well recently with that.
Comment by Randy — March 27, 2007 @ 7:19 pm
Randy - later shows skew younger as the old fogies go to bed.
Comment by Arthur — March 27, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
Randy - later shows skew younger as the old fogies go to bed.
Arthur: That’s absurd. Us old fogies stay up late because we don’t have to go to work the following day!
Comment by Ira — March 27, 2007 @ 7:53 pm
Actually Arthur, I was right. Stelter did screw up. The demo numbers are never more than half of the total viewership. But here, the monday numbers show Nancy Grace actually had 800,000 viewers.
Comment by Randy — March 27, 2007 @ 8:11 pm
It’s very interesting how whenver Stelter “screws up,” it’s always in favor of MSNBC and specifically Olbermann. Not to mention that he knowingly uses false “Live+” numbers that advertisers do not consider.
Comment by Sam — March 27, 2007 @ 8:37 pm
Talking in terms of network TV, this is from the futon critic, explaining the ratings system:
As of January 1, Nielsen has added DVR viewership to its audience sample. In the case of “fast national” ratings, the data includes all DVR playback through 3:00 a.m. eastern time that day.
So, for network tv, legitimate sources such as Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and my favorite little site Zap2it.com, use DVR numbers. So why then is Stelter wrong Sam?
Comment by Randy — March 27, 2007 @ 10:45 pm
“Not to mention that he knowingly uses false “Live+” numbers that advertisers do not consider.”
The Live+ numbers are false? Do you have proof?
And just how many advertisers do you suppose get their ratings information from Brian Stelter’s blog? I doubt it’s very many. His readers - that would be the people who DO get their ratings data from him - are probably more intested in knowing how many people are watching the SHOW each night, not how many are watching the commercials.
Comment by berberry — March 27, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
Good point. All we, as in people who like cable news care about is who gets more viewers. We are not advertisers. Advertisers may care about that, but not the people here. Our arguments are based solely on how many people watch each show.
Comment by Randy — March 27, 2007 @ 11:04 pm
All this would do is take viewers away from Keith’s live audience, which is a bad idea considering his steady growth. MSNBC may have gone to the well once too often.
Comment by The Voice of Reason — March 27, 2007 @ 11:17 pm
They may lose some of the 8pm audience, but even if it’s temporary, new viewers Also this puts him up against all three of FNC’s primetime shows.
Also, I’ve always thought they should put Hardball in primetime. I think it would do much better there; it might even get better #s than Countdown. They did rerun Hardball at 11pm a long while back, so it was in primetime on the left coast. Maybe they’ll try Hardballat 10pm next week…
Comment by erljr — March 27, 2007 @ 11:41 pm
What I meant to say:
They may lose some of the 8pm audience, but even if it’s temporary, new viewers may follow him back to 8pm or midnight. Also this puts him up against all three of FNC’s primetime shows.
Comment by erljr — March 27, 2007 @ 11:48 pm
The Live+ numbers are false? Do you have proof?
berberry — March 27, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
I think what Sam was talking about was how the Live+ ratings aren’t an accurate reflection of who’s actually watching the program. The DVR portion only takes into account the people who’ve DVR’d the program… not who’ve spent time to watch it.
I guess you can make the argument that even though the advertisers don’t use it (part of the premise of DVR’s is that you can skip the commercials), it’s still interesting to us… but you must take into account the percentage of people who DVR without ever watching the program. Honestly I can’t imagine many people watching day old news (although, personally I do… but I’m strange), so I would have to guess the percentage of non-watchers would be pretty high.
Bottom line, the Live+ ratings, at this time, are too unreliable to be really considered a legitimate source of ratings information.
Comment by ImNotBlue — March 28, 2007 @ 12:37 am
This is the futon critic’s (TV website) FAQ on all of this:
. What about TiVos (or other DVR services)? Does Nielsen track those viewers?
As of January 1, Nielsen has added DVR viewership to its audience sample. In the case of “fast national” ratings, the data includes all DVR PLAYBACK through 3:00 a.m. eastern time that day.
Comment by Randy — March 28, 2007 @ 12:41 am
“Bottom line, the Live+ ratings, at this time, are too unreliable to be really considered a legitimate source of ratings information.”
Bingo. Don’t take ImNotBlue’s word for it though or mine. Advertisers made the decision to not consider those numbers and many major industry publications have reported that. Stelter ignores it because it’s just one way to make MSNBC look more competitive than it is. Just like he suddenly went for the “demo” when MSNBC started aggressively touting it P.R.-wise and Olbermann started bragging about his young viewership.
It’s so transparent. I wouldn’t care about this if Stelter didn’t parade around saying that “credibility is all I have” and calling himself a TV critic when he’s never worked a day in his life in the TV business. He’s an ethically-compromised pawn who is doing the dirty work of a struggling network.
I’m not going to clog up Spud’s blog anymore with talk about a competitor but Brian Stelter is not fooling anyone with his slanted coverage and lies about his loyalties.
Comment by Sam — March 28, 2007 @ 1:14 am