ChuckTV.net The CHUCK archive
Chuck was pre-empted last night to allow NBC to air a special Matt Lauer interview with former President George W. Bush. The fast overnights are in and…well, maybe they should have included a JEFFSTER! performance: the special drew about 7 million viewers (more than Chuck‘s audience), but a woeful 1.7 in that advertiser-important 18-49 demo. By comparison, last week Chuck had around 5.5 million viewers and a 2.0 in the demo.
Without Chuck‘s stability at 8PM, The Event and Chase fell to record lows with a 1.7 and 1.2 in the demo, respectively. Still wondering why NBC keeps Chuck in that timeslot? Over and over it’s been proven – as low as the ratings are compared to other networks, nothing else can compete there for NBC.
Why am I not surprised by this? X-D
I’ve still got to wonder how much of the ratings they got were actual people who were for some reason interested in George W Bush, how many wanted to see if he’d screw up on air and how many just had thier machine set to switch over to Chuck automatically and were watching a dvd because they weren’t into the other offerings available that they don’t usually watch.
If those people have their Neilsen boxes set up correctly and are following the instructions they’re supposed to, they wouldn’t be included in the ratings.
Chuck is actually a corner-stone show for NBC. You just need to get them to admit it.
A thought just occurred to me:
What if NBC’s choice of this day and time for the Lauer/Bush interview was partially an experiment to see how the ratings of The Event and Chase would be affected by Chuck’s absence?
I think it had more to do with the fact that Bush’s autobiography goes on sale today.
I have no doubt that was the primary factor…I was just wondering if NBC was also taking advantage of the opportunity for a ratings experiment with its newer shows
Couldn’t have agreed more!!!
This makes me happy. I nearly emailed NBC last week to let them know that they had lost me as a viewer in the 8pm hour this week. Turns out I didn’t need to as plenty of people in my demo voted with their television sets.
Preempting even a mediocre show for basically an hour long book advertisement is silly. I realize that scoring an exclusive with an ex-president is a major coup especially right before a book opening, but you would think that NBC might actually want to keep a loyal fanbase interested.
Chase 1.2.. That’s shameful.. See they need Chuck to at least stabilize the other shows on air that night of the week…
Will be interesting to see if The Event climbs a bit next week with Chuck as a lead in again. I’m wondering if the back-order for Chase will ever see the light of day at this point, too.
As for last week as a whole, Chuck improved in Rank on NBC (7th, from 8th) but saw no change in how far it was from NBC’s average rating.
It’s worth noting it’s been 3 weeks since NBC has aired a “normal” week though. Last week it had The “Women of SNL” instead of The Event and Chase (raised the average), and Decision 2010 instead of Parenthood and a regular length Biggest Loser (lowered the average). The week before had re-runs of both Law & Order shows that dragged down the average, and Scared Shrekless instead of 30 Rock (raised the average). We should be able to see how everything but Chuck does this week though.
Unless something changed i seen that chase got some back episodes …cant remember how many and NBC canceled undercovers i tried to watch it but never really caught my attention maybe because there is only 1 spy show i watch…lol
Chase did get a back order, but given it’s performance this week those episodes might not air, get moved to Saturday or get held back until the summer. Either way, Chase *should* be done after this season with the numbers it has.
Wow I knew this was going to happen but it’s still great. I know we complain about Chuck’s timeslot but now we can see what monday’s would be life without it… chuck renewal looks even better.
As I posted on TVBTN. Chuck is definitely helping stabilize NBC with fan zealotry, but Comcast needs to do something once they fully take over. I say a complete reorganization is definitely in order. NBC has some of the worst most unappealing ads for their shows than any other network. The only reason I watch some of NBC’s shows is through word of mouth and actually forcing myself to watch a show or two (Chuck in this case) and then I just don’t pay any attention to the worthless ads to sponsor their shows since I’m already then hooked.
NBC needs a complete revamp and at least 50% of the entire company fired or just shuffled around. They don’t have any clue how to get past the old model of doing things and move into a relevant modern media giant. Fox has since taken over NBC’s roll if you ask me as other Big Three (ABC, CBS being the first).
Preferably none of the people that support CHUCK.
Rod
To be honest I think Chuck suffers from a lack of promotion. There are lots of people that I have talked to about Chuck that did not even know about Chuck. That tells me its not getting enough promotion, it would be fine if they had heard about it but either did not care for it or had watched an episode and not liked it … ya like that is going to happen.
Rod
Thats what you get when you take away CHUCK.
The lessons here are pretty clear for NBC: (1) Pre-empt a solid performer like “Chuck” and kiss the rest of the night goodbye; (2)Promote the bejeezuz out of “Chuck” to get its numbers up, and watch the numbers surge for the shows that follow.
Amen to that, Doctor Bob! 😀
I’m still thinking that NBC could attract more viewers if they just promoted the fact that Timothy Dalton, a former Bond, is the new baddie on Chuck. There are plenty of Bond fans out there who would get a kick out of what Dalton has done so far.
This is good news, although I’m still so frustrated by what NBC does. They want to get Chuck’s ratings up, so they bring in good writers, big name guest stars, etc. But they keep making the same huge mistake again and again by not airing Chuck on a different night. Very idiotic since changing the time slot is the best way to increase the ratings and they seem totally oblivious to it. Now they’ll see that they need Chuck there to stabilize the other 2, which is better for our renewal chances, but if they want to help the show out they’ll move it to a different night. Oh, and before I forget to mention the other mistake, just a little promotion, you know, maybe just a tiny bit at all would help a LOT. And lastly, for some reason it seemed to me that the whole interview with Bush thing would have been better off airing later, like during the news. It doesn’t seem to be right for prime time.
Be very careful what you ask for with regards to promotion! I would prefer chuck gets a 2.0 with no promotion then a 2.3 with millions of dollars. Because in the latter situation chuck gets cancelled, in the former they have a chance of getting renewed. This is the great thing about chuck it is pulling the highest ratings on monday night while costing the least! keep it that way and the chances of renewal are higher!
I live overseas in Europe and i cannot agree more with Amrit… Chuck is most probably at no cost compared to what are the Chase and the Event and getting a solid 2.0 every week with no promotion will get us a Season 5. I can bet my life on that :D.
P.S. Cant wait to see the TVmagazine cover so chucksters can have a big promo at no cost for NBC
Still amazed by people thinking Chuck can get more viewers. It’s season 4 already !! How come new people, who know nothing of the Chuck ‘verse, could become attracted by the show ? I say, we should be thankful that the ratings don’t drop and forget any hope of getting bigger audience. Like Amrit said, I prefer Chuck getting a modest 1.9/2.0 in a ultra-concurrential timeslot with no promotion than a Chuck with 2.1 or 2.2 with more adds on an easy timeslot.
Actually it does. It got me. I watched 2 old epis and got crazy over it, bought the DVD for 1, and 2 seasons. That was like 2 months ago. And I already got 4 of my friends into it. SO yeah…it happens
People watch new shows all the time. Especially when there is an attractive plot point or guest star. Even established ones like Chuck. If they like it enough they will continue to watch and maybe even buy the DVDs to boost sales or watch past seasons online (legally or not) or on Netflix. My wife’s grandparents started watching midway through the second season not even realizing that it wasn’t the first season of the show. Now they love it and own the DVDs.
When I made September “Chucktember” on my “The Zone with Timm McCoy” podcast, my subscriber base was 10 million on iTunes. Since my “Spy School” episode, I saw a huge surge in people from my listeners emailing me about “Chuck”. At the time, NBC was not even running anything about the upcoming Season 4. Along with ChuckTV.net, I’d say that we helped a great deal in showing NBC that, not only did our individual fan bases grow, but the interest in what “Chuck” was all about, grew just due to just word of mouth.
My opinion is that NBC saw what we were doing as we seeded interest in the show by word of mouth, through websites and podcasts and just thought that the fan bases means of information was enough. Good, but not great. If NBC REALLY believes in the show, which I believe they do, they would not have called for a “Back 11”. But I agree with most of you that NBC, by all means, dump money into promotion of shows that are drawing in viewers. There’s more promotion by the local affiliates for their news teams than the programing on it. That’s how “The Jay Leno Show” died. Local affiliates complaining of lead ins then the network as a whole. So my recommendation, EVERYBODY CALL YOUR LOCAL NBC AFFILIATES AND TELL THEM ABOUT THE SHOWS YOU LOVE AND WHY! Instead of complaing about the bad choices they make, only tell them what you LOVE about NBC shows, not the affiliates. It’s like throwing in a steak to the lion just before you enter the cage. Trust me on this one.
Dude i started watching Chuck this summer and i got sooooo hocked up that i virtually watched all three seasons in a matter of 3 days… like 12-14 hours a day Chuck and at this moment i am even more addicted. So we can get more viewers in my opinion… i mean, we are talking about Chuck 😀 If Sarah cant stop loving him who can 😀
me too! found out about it in late-july and am already caught up and addicted to it.