Palin on Fox and Leno Loses
I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. I make predictions.
Resolutions are those things that you wish would happen, i.e. “I shall lose weight.” “I shall exercise more.” “I resolve to ...” You know what I mean. Predictions are those things that you may be pretty sure about: “I won’t lose significant weight.” “I’ll gain back the weight I lost.” “Democracy will survive in the United States.”
Over the past year I made several media predictions, and now they are either becoming reality are they are being talked about at the very least. The latest prediction came true today.
“Sarah Palin signs on with Fox News.”—Washington Post. It took a few months longer than I thought, but it’s coming to a cable TV near you. Surprised? Hey, she can read a teleprompter. She has a degree in journalism. She cannot ad lib, however. (See “O Biden” on “60 Minutes” January 10, 2010) or with Katie Couric. So, this announcement leads to another prediction: Sarah Palin will utter some grievous gaffe in the next year. We’ll see.
At first I said, nah, this announcement isn’t worth a post. Then, I thought about a few other newsmcnabb predictions and recent developments.
NBC cancels “Jay Leno Show”. In the concluding paragraphs in last winter’s post about “The Leno Effect” I opined that Leno wouldn’t be around very long. Why? He was killing the news ratings for local newscasts following the broadcast.
Leno’s lousy numbers resulted in a slide locally for KXAN TV (NBC) during the November sweeps. The Winter Olympics cannot start soon enough to bring the viewers back. What will be interesting, however, is will the viewers come back.
Local news users/consumers/viewers have been sampling other 10 O’clock broadcasts for months now, documented by KEYE TV (CBS) rise to #2 in the Austin market. KVUE TV (ABC) remains #1. Will the Winter Olympics mean the return of better ratings for KXAN? Or, will these viewers have found a new home for their late news consumption.
Further, what will NBC do with the 9 O’clock (Central) hour? Will it gain immediate traction, attracting viewings and providing a powerful lead-in audience for the late local news? It could be as bad as “The Leno Effect”. Both network and local broadcasters are twitching.
One other prediction that attracted little attention when written is that free network TV will disappear to cable in the future. Local broadcasts chided me saying, “No, it will never happen.” Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider while trying to purchase a controlling share of NBC Universal also protests that they are committee to the traditional broadcast model. They would never take NBC to cable. Remember, a big business deal is in the works and people are prone to saying whatever will help, rather than hinder their efforts. I’m just sayin’ …
© Jim McNabb, 2010