And if Wolf Blitzer were his own network, he'd get a 0.2

Fourth quarter ratings are in for the major cable networks. Here's a sampling:

	P2+			P18-49			P18-34
	4Q 2005			4Q 2005			4Q 2005
Network	Cvg Rtg	000	Network	Cvg Rtg	000	Network	Cvg Rtg	000
NICK	0.9	2102	NAN	0.6	628	ADSM	0.7	361
NAN	0.6	1475	ESPN	0.6	598	NAN	0.7	359
USA	0.5	1204	TBSC	0.6	596	ESPN	0.6	307
TNT	0.5	1186	USA	0.6	595	TBSC	0.6	301
TOON	0.5	1144	TNT	0.6	582	NICK	0.6	284
ESPN	0.5	1074	NICK	0.5	488	USA	0.5	278
ADSM	0.5	1029	ADSM	0.5	480	MTV	0.5	261
TBSC	0.4	1011	LIF	0.4	443	TNT	0.5	257
LIF	0.4	1004	FX	0.4	383	FX	0.4	195
FOXNC	0.4	919	SPIKE	0.3	352	CMDY	0.4	190
HALL	0.4	641	MTV	0.3	333	LIF	0.3	178

Notice that two major demographic groups are led by networks that aren't 24-hour services but are partial-day creations that exploit a loophole in Nielsen reporting: ADSM is the new Adult Swim, which is basically Cartoon Net at Night, an obvious (and successful) attempt to replicate the effect of Nickelodeon's Nick at Night (NAN).

 

The ratings above are for "Total Programming Day," which means that ADSM, with its six-hour "day," is allowed to compete against other channels with much longer, if not 24-hour, days. (I'm not sure if networks are allowed to subtract overnight paid programming from their "days" or not.)

If you ask me, TOON and NICK should be required to report their full day ratings as one service. Let them break their channels into three or four or however many pieces after they get the data back from Nielsen.

Advice to my media colleagues for dealing with press releases from the American Family Association or Parents Television Council denouncing [network show here] as [synonym for "immoral" or "anti-Christian" here]

Just ignore them. They won't go away, but you'll feel better.

Oh, and parents: Know what your kids are watching, and talk with them about it.

Harder than it sounds, I know ...

Kennedy Center Honors beaten by telenovela

Univision's "Alborada" topped CBS in the national overnights among viewers ages 18-49, according to Nielsen.

How much longer do you suppose CBS will allow this grand tradition of airing "The Kennedy Center Honors" to continue before they say, "Screw it, we'll get better numbers with ... well, 'Numb3rs'"?

Link: Broadcasting & Cable: The Business of Television.

(For a different p.o.v., see the jump.)

Amateurs make the cut

The people who assemble the "Late Show with David Letterman" e-letter every week hold a Top Ten reader contest. Writers throw out a topic, readers try their best to come up with punchlines. Usually they prove that writing a Top Ten List is harder than it looks.

But then comes weeks like this one. Topic: "Top Ten Rejected Titles for 'Brokeback Mountain.'" It may not seem like a slow hanging curveball down the middle of the plate, but it was to this bunch. My favorite was #7 ... and the other nine finalists. On the jump.

The year in review: Not dead yet

In the first of two year-end reviews, I looked at the most significant TV-related stories, including a few milestone events, none more interesting than the publication this week of a 20th anniversary edition of Neil Postman's classic piece of television criticism, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Political Discourse in an Age of Show Business.

Link: Kansas City Star | 12/25/2005 | The biggest stories of 2005.

Not everyone in 1985 felt as strongly as Postman did. But as educators started teaching his book, and TV exploded into 500 channels of diversion, many readers (myself included) started to realize how right he was. For instance, Postman wrote that electronic news created a psychotic state of affairs in which a story about war or tragedy was immediately followed by an item about, say, Jennifer Aniston's divorce or a piece of news video that showed a skydiver surviving a fall from 10,000 feet. What Postman couldn't foresee, but which surely would not surprise him, is that the stories about Aniston and the skydiver would not only follow more serious news, they would become serious news.

I recently spoke with Neil Postman's son Andrew, who wrote the introduction for the new edition. Andrew Postman isn't entirely in agreement with his father's conclusions, and there are developments the old professor did not foresee. Yet he also found that young people still find this book speaks to them today, even though it was written when they were in diapers and three TV networks reigned.

Here's an edited version of our conversation.

Download andrewpostman.mp3 (10:00)

That was the year that was

This afternoon on my KMOX show, in an extended segment, Aaron Barnhart and I reviewed the year in television -- from the Katrina coverage to the indecency hearings, from "My Name Is Earl" to Ken Jennings, from the death of Carson and Jennings to the birth of the video iPod.

Link: Paul Harris Online.

A Christmas wish

Here's what we wanted for Christmas -- some Christmas movies.

Sunday night, December 25th, we surveyed the 200 movies available on demand from our cable company. Then we flipped through another two dozen or so channels of movies on our digital tier.

No sightings of "It's a Wonderful Life." No "Holiday Inn." Not even an airing of "Bad Santa."

Bizarre.

You can turn on the radio in any market in the U.S. of A. and hear Christmas songs from the middle of October onward. And yet you can't get a decent holiday movie when you want it?

What am I missing here? Why is the federal government wasting its time pressuring Comcast and Time Warner to set up "family tiers"? It's the holidays -- set up a frickin' "holiday tier"!

Right?

Check yer bookmarks

Look up at the browser bar. It should now read either

http://tvbarn.com OR
http://www.tvbarn.com

If it reads anything else (namely, blogs.kansascity.com), please reset your TV Barn bookmark. I've provided a link above for your convenience.

I decided to mirror my kansascity.com page after last week's TypePad meltdown, which left readers thinking I wasn't posting anything to my site, when in fact I was but TypePad wasn't.

Something else we can blame on John Gibson

While watching "The O.C." last night, I was struck, lightning-bolt-like, by a realization that has been completely obscured by the "War Against Christmas" distraction:

This is the perfect Chrismukkah!  Christmas and Hanukkah on the same date!

Link: Chrismukkah Cards for Interfaith Families.

TV en fuego

Thanks to the power of corporate synergy, the WPIX Christmas Eve Yule Log will burn brightly again this year from coast to coast. The longtime New York television tradition will be carried on WGN Superstation as well. Watch carefully and you might see someone throwing Cubs season tickets on the blaze.   

Press release on the jump.

Jay walking all over Dave

So why, with the ratings on CBS going up, up, up and those for NBC going down, down, down -- at least in prime time -- why is Jay Leno again pulling away from David Letterman? I posed that question to Rick Ludwin, the network's longtime head of late night. He thinks it has a lot to do with Jay. I think it has a lot to do with NBC.  But on one thing we're agreed: If Wal-Mart held onto customers the way "The Tonight Show" held onto viewers, its stock price would be a lot higher.

Hear my interview with Rick Ludwin (MP3, 7:42)

In related news, Jeff Zucker was promoted last week, making him the heir apparent to Bob Wright, NBC's top executive. No "Today Show," no "Tonight Show," no promotion, don't you think?

Ratings PR on the jump.

Virgin spanks monkey

According to this press release (on the jump), DVD sales of The 40-Year-Old Virgin exceeded $66 million last week, assuming that those 3.7 million customers each paid $18.

According to Craig Ferguson's very funny Monday routine, the movie "King Kong" took in just $50 million over the weekend.

And if you listen to Ferguson's routine all the way through -- which I recommend -- you'll discover that I  gleaned only the second-best "Kong" headline from that news.

Revolting sights today on CBS.com

James Van Praagh is doing a "cybercast seance" today on CBS.com.

Details on the jump. You have been warned.

And this just in: Dave Letterman is getting the sutures taken out of his hand live at 4:30, and you can watch, also on a webcast.

I have no idea if the grotesque "Gash Cam" will be employed in this cybercast. But my gosh, with all this compelling content, why will anyone ever want to turn on their TV sets?

Because guys don't buy Tide

So I'm listening in on a teleconference call this morning with Nielsen Media Research, which is announcing that it will begin tracking DVR ratings next week, and VOD ratings next spring. Well, OK, so Nielsen is crawling into the 21st century on some fronts. But I couldn't help noticing that on one front, it is already there and it's the rest of the world that's playing catchup.

Nielsen has a female CEO. She wasn't even on this call, but her lieutenants were, and many of them are women. In fact, five out of fifteen of the company's top executives are women.

All right, not much of a headline. But jump to the press release and I think you'll agree that my announcement trumps theirs.   

Your eerie reference to "West Wing" +/or Dick Cheney here

In today's TV Barn Radio segment of my KMOX show, Aaron Barnhart and I discussed what "The West Wing" will do now that John Spencer (Leo McGarry) has died in real life. Then Aaron explains the "Deal or No Deal" show that NBC is running all week, and we talk about primetime telenovellas.

Link: Paul Harris Online

(P.S. One detail you'll hear me grasping for at the end -- and not getting: "Deal or No Deal" comes to us from our friends at Endemol, creators of such high quality entertainment as "Fear Factor," "The Next Great Champ" and the first season of "Big Brother" on CBS.--AB)

So that's why I couldn't find one on eBay

I have to agree that this item regarding Teri Hatcher's "passion wagon" is possibly the best correction I've ever read:

Link: Slate - Ben Wasserstein.

Another one rides the bus

The bus departing with "Nightline" old-timers, that is. This time, it's Robert Krulwich, the irresistibly listenable reporter who specialized in making science, technology and -- above all -- economics sound interesting.  He's going back to NPR, where no doubt they're as eager to get Krulwich back as ABC was to unload him.

If there was any doubt that ABC wants "Nightline" to break all ties with public broadcasting, this is it. It is unlikely that Martin Bashir will ever set up a documentary unit for PBS, as Ted Koppel once did, and it is equally unlikely that another NPR or PBS personality will ever be recruited to service "Nightline" again. I'm not saying this is an appalling development (though you might).  I'm just saying it's a definitive milestone, perhaps even more so than Dave Marash's departure.

Press release on the jump.

Bottom-feeder update

Yahoo, inevitably, is getting into the cheapo television business:

Link: C21Media

You wonder what interactivity will be built into the show. My guess is, about the same level as "Big Brother," a show airing on old-school CBS.

Big award for tiny TV

You may recall that earlier this year the Television Academy took a tentative step into the world of broadband when it announced there would be a single Sports Emmy category for video produced for the Web.

Since then, like a swollen river punching through a poorly designed levee, the Academy has been flooded with interest, and now is scrambling to catch the wave.  (Hm. That may be a poorly designed metaphor.)  It announced today it will accept entries for a brand-new video podcast category to be awarded on the Daytime Emmys in April, thus beating the Sports Emmys to the punch. This will be a general entertainment Emmy; it just happens to be connected to the Daytimes because that's the biggest showcase produced by the East Coast academy.  (The West Coast academy, also known as ATAS, produces the prime-time Emmys, and who knows, may come up with their own podcast category.)

I'm not sure that this will produce any video content more compelling than a Best Commercial entry, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.  In fact, if you've seen a video podcast that really does something other than "extend the brand," and which -- important qualifier coming -- actually has a snowball's chance in hell of getting nominated for an Emmy Award, post it in the Comments below.

Bye, bye, "Airline"

"Airline" was a great reality-show concept for A&E, not to mention a wonderful advertisement for Southwest Airlines, whose dedicated employees were depicted week after week coolly and professionally dealing with out-of-control passengers.

Then a Southwest jet skidded off the runway in Chicago last week and onto one of the streets wrapping around Midway Airport, killing a child in a passing car.

Now, the show is reportedly cancelled, making an unfortunate tandem with the wretched "Growing Up Gotti":

Link: United Press International - NewsTrack - A&E whacks 'Gotti,' grounds 'Airline'

Maybe it was time for "Airline" to go anyway. Most reality shows start to repeat themselves after the first three episodes, and this one was no exception. True, the investigation into the Midway crash -- the first fatality in Southwest Airlines history -- may ultimately exonerate the airline. But A&E had to recognize that Southwest would need time to rebuild its lovable, carefree image in the public, and that airing a show that features members of the public -- however drunk, reckless or irresponsible they may be -- yelling at Southwest employees was simply not going to make the same impression post-Midway as it did pre-Midway.