You know the old line about lies, damned lies, and statistics. Same for TV ratings -- and while many reports about audience levels for the Monday premiere of NBC's newsmagazine Rock Center generally wrote the new show off as a flop, I beg to differ. And have the lies and damned lies to prove it...
The raw figures, the ones that sound bad, are these:
Brian Williams' new prime-time newsmagazine premiered Monday night with several strong, impressive stories (see my review HERE), and with a visit by Jon Stewart that included him clowning around at Williams' anchor desk for NBC Nightly News (see photo at top).
Yet the premiere of Rock Center, according to the Nielsen Co., had a 1 rating, which translates to 4.1 million viewers on Halloween night -- lower than figures generated that same night over on Univision. In the 10-11 p.m. ET time slot, CBS's Hawaii Five-O and ABC's Castle both drew a 2.9 rating and more than 10 million viewers.
Not only that, but the premiere rating of NBC's Rock Center was 38 percent lower than the first outing of the dismal drama series it replaced on Monday nights, The Playboy Club.
But now for the damned lies -- or, as I see it, the other side of the story.
1) It was Halloween night, a low viewership night, when lots of parents and other discerning viewers were out with their kids.
2) Once NBC's viewers got a glimpse of The Playboy Club, they fled in droves -- and those droves were big enough so that every subsequent episode drew even fewer viewers than Brian Williams managed to lure back to NBC with a newsmagazine,.
3) The two-hour lead-in for the smart, savvy, non-pandering Rock Center was the stupid, insulting, nothing-but-pandering musical competition series The Sing-Off. That program averaged, over its two hours of screechy inanity, a 1.4 rating and 4.4 million total viewers.
That means, if you look at it one way, that Brian Williams lost only 300,000 viewers that were handed to him, stingily and ineptly, by The Sing-Off. In other words, in a later time slot, he almost held his own.
But I suggest The Sing-Off was so moronic, and Rock Center by comparison so cerebral, that the overlap of viewers who watched both shows probably was closer to nil.
I'm guessing that Brian Williams and company lured almost all 4.1 million viewers to its program from a dead start, and should be proud not only of what they did during the hour, but of the fact that any intelligent viewers found NBC on that night at all.
The network, reportedly, has given Rock Center a three-year commitment. TV network loyalty, though, is measured by a different yardstick, like dog years. In network-speak, three years is good for, probably, one season, tops.
But the show's first impression was a vey good one. Next week's audience numbers, with the Halloween crowd at home, will be slightly higher -- and from there, patience and quality could, and should, combine to create a long-standing NBC success.
In the past, that same formula worked to turn several initial ratings flops at NBC into proud successes: Hill Street Blues, Cheers, St. Elsewhere and Seinfeld, just to name a few. An audience seeking TV quality is still out there, waiting to be served. The audience is the same, potentially, but the NBC corporate players have changed.
The question is -- at NBC, are there any executives left with the taste and patience, and guts, to play for the long haul?