Oh dear. BUT on the bright side I think this was not unexpected. In the Friday night slot when many of our family viewers are not home, we expected a drop for LIVE views. I have been told that the live views are not the focus. But the 3 and 7 day numbers are important.
So things we can do: Go to the CBS site and Hulu and iTunes and watch (or just let the video run). Do it over and over. Those views are counted. Click on the adds. Support our advertisers and tell them why. Tweet like crazy, use an AmazingRace hashtag. Social media buzz is more important than ever.
This is going to be our best season in a long time. Momentum can build.
HI Peach
I think there is a good chance that the ratings might go up next week with weaker competition from ABC at 8pm.
As for delayed viewing it helps a little. CBS has been mentioning the C based ratings. Those commercial ratings are what pay the bills, what set ad prices, as for the most part ad buyers (the one exception is product placement which can either give money upfront to a show or pay a rate based off of the number of viewers who watched the program during the time frame of the product placement, I have heard no reports on which applies to the TAR for things like the Gnome or the various Ford, and airlines featured on the show) don't care if you watch the program they only care if you watch the commercials. Thats why live viewers have always been the most valuable. DVR viewers at least 40% (Rough average TAR could be better could be worse) of them skip commercials and thus don't help.
I have seen the Commercial numbers once for one week last year. and the commercial plus 7 was just a tenth higher then TAR live same day numbers. Heck even our live same day includes a significant amount of DVR viewers and some of them skip the commercials.
Thats why for the most part even when 60 minutes averaged a lower demo ratings it normally got higher ad rates. 60 minutes has one of the highest rates for viewers watching the commercials and watching them live, typically only sports programming does better then 60 minutes in that regard. And on the data I have seen for a week where 60 minutes had a lower Live same day, lower live plus 3 and lower L plus 7 then TAR, its C ratings for each was higher then TAR.
For those who hate how important demos are, HULU, iTunes, CBS Site, don't care how old you are. They typically earn less then a live TV viewer, but they absolutely do help. Unfortunately I have no idea how TAR fares in comparison to the other shows aired on CBS. Certainly Insider videos and their brief ads a minor plus that most shows don't have.