GSN Ratings - Part 4

[starwheel]

The thing is, upheaving the schedule may be a disaster of sorts...reason being is that viewers tend to be very predictable and loyal. (Could you IMAGINE how angry TPIR viewers would be if that show were moved to, say, 3p.m.???) Case in point (and GSN-specific) - when they broke up the Sherriwed and Jerry hour, the ratings tanked, and still have yet to fully recover. And when they tried them at noon, they bombed. In most cases, shows tend to do better when their typical audience tends to actually be watching. The only recent exceptions have been 25K and CS on Friday nights, which are pulling down very healthy numbers, and they have great formats that still hold up well. I think P+ or SP would do equally well on Friday nights too, for the same reason, if they would try either of those in that block...and there is the Betty White factor with those shows, too.

[CarShark]

The thing is, upheaving the schedule may be a disaster of sorts...reason being is that viewers tend to be very predictable and loyal.

Maybe some network viewers, but all we hear is that GSN has a more transient audience. That's why the ratings are usually all over the place all the time. One day Deal or No Deal will get 450K viewers and just last week it dropped out of the Top 20 entirely. GSN doesn't seem to have a true destination show that brings people in like Baggage and Newlywed did earlier this year, and even if they were to get one, that's no guarantee that they'll watch the shows that come on before it or after it. It's not unusual to see a show get 150K-200K more viewers than the shows around it.

[Lingofan97]

The thing is....no matter what you put in before noon it's not going to get high ratings. I thought it was a stupid idea for GSN to put programming in at 8am instead of Paid Programming. Card Sharks and 25K Pyramid were doing "good" for mornings but you're never going to see late afternoon like numbers in the mornings. We still need variety of classics from 8am-12pm, which could boost ratings but they still wouldn't "great".

I also wish they would put classics on from 9am-12pm on weekend mornings. For example, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune (even the modern episodes). SONY would probably let GSN put them in there because the morning is far away from the "access hour". And of course other classics GSN hasn't shown in years that they refuse to put on during the week. Two Whammy's* and two Newlywed Games on the weekend mornings is insane when you can see them other times.

*-Whammy is taking Chain Reaction's place in January on weekend mornings. The show will now be on 13 times a week, which is more times than there showing Woolery Lingo, 100K Pyramid, and Card Sharks now. Overload for an 8-year old show that hasn't had new episodes since 2003.

[Lingofan97]

Rating highlights for the week of December 5-11


- Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader is first and third for the week

- The Newlywed Game maintains 4 spots in the top 10 from Tuesday night Marathons.

- Family Feud also keeps 4 slots in the top 10

- Power of 10 comes in 11th for the week (On a Saturday though, Not Million Dollar Monday of course)

- Deal or No Deal ratings continue to fall, only keeps one spot in the top 20

- All daytime programming stayed out of the top 20 (even Chain Reaction)

Average ratings for weekdays:
8AM Match Game- 86K
8:30AM Macth Game- 147K
9:00AM Family Feud- 142K
9:30AM Family Feud- 173K
10:00AM Card Sharks- 207K
10:30AM $25K Pyramid- 193K
11:00AM Match Game-182K
11:30AM Match Game- 193K
12:00PM Lingo- 210K
12:30PM Lingo- 231K
1:00PM- Deal or No Deal- 222K
2:00PM Catch 21- 204K
2:30PM Deal or No Deal- 153K
3:00PM Whammy- 233K
3:30PM Chain Reaction- 237K
4:00PM Family Feud- 266K
4:30PM Family Feud- 339K
5:00PM Deal or No Deal- 278K
6:00PM The Newlywed Game- 251K
6:30PM Baggage- 267K
Midnight Lingo- 256K (wow)

- Million Dollar Monday averages rating around high 100's to upper 200's (power of 10 was the lowest)

- Deal or No Deal Thursday night marathon doesn't perform well at all

- Flashback Friday starts off weak but finally gets 300K+ rating with Card Sharks. Match Game was in the very low 200K's and 25K Pyramid finishes off with around 250K or higher. Dawson Feud does pretty crappy with low 200K's

[CaseyAbell]

The averages for December 5-11 were 305K/227K prime time/total day. Not so great but not a disaster.

The 7:00PM-12:00AM marathon averages: Mon 240K, Tue 345K, Wed 251K, Thu 230K, Fri 250K, Sat 321K, Sun 373K. Pretty blah except for Sherri on Tuesday, Karn and O'Hurley on Saturday, and Foxworthy on Sunday.

As pointed out in the post above, the pre-3:00PM weekday schedule remains quite poor and pulls down the total day average. I've already made my suggestion to get recent seasons of the syndie game shows for the daytime window, and I'll make the suggestion again. Not only would the syndies get better numbers in the window, but they would feed a bigger audience into the later afternoon shows.

The schedule gets bashed around next week. We'll see what happens. Do we start another thread?

[Playmaniac001]

- Deal or No Deal ratings continue to fall, only keeps one spot in the top 20

And it wasn't even one of the Thursday night airings, or 1PM/5PM daily airings. It was the 2PM Saturday Syndie version.
While on the topic of DoND, The best rating for it besides that Saturday afternoon one was at midnight on Sunday, where it had 338k viewers. 1 vs 100 and Million had 268k & 240k at 1AM & 2AM, also.

Power of 10 in the Top 10 - WOW!

Sherri had an awesome night. Jerry, not so much... He didn't do terrible, plus - how many episodes of Baggage in a row can you handle? Although the same can be said for other nights.

Million Dollar Monday beat Deal or No Deal Thursday this week. In fact, it wasn't too far off from Wednesday/Friday (See Casey's averages above).

In case anyone was wondering, Syndie DoND is still killing the afternoons, with every airing below 200k

[billycw]

Hard to believe Whammy getting that many airings......

It really is perplexing when I see comments that ignore the obvious fact that many of the pre-3 Pm shows are being played for the 5th cycle since 2009.

1) Most of GSN's older audience watch in the mornings. Even older people get bored when they have seen the same episode 5 times within a year or so

2) When bashing the declining ratings of the same abused shows, think it's very unlikely GSN would put too many of newer acquisitions on pre-3 PM. That may very well happen, but can't see GSN just overplaying shows like they did with DOND when the prime time ratings were fantastic.Don't think GSN has the money to do that. Or the lack of ratings' sense.Doubt GSN would put more than one show like DWTS in the AM
...but hey, you never know with GSN.

3) One man's fantasy is another's travesty. But someone's "fantasy' schedule doesn't need to be told it's implausible when that same person's "fantasy' schedule is just as implausible...or plausible. Making fun of someone's dream schedule doesn't make you as smart as a 5th Grader...or a 1st Grader.

4) Except for GSN abusing 100 K around 2006/07, I can't recall anything like the last few years concerning rerun abuse of shows like MG, CS etc.I'm fairly certain those shows would do much better in the AM/early PM if GSN just bought newer episodes or stopped the hard-to-explain practice of Classic Game Show Deja Vu.

5) DOND is struggling right now. The syndie never had close to the same appeal as the original.But the overall isn't great for DOND... Remember a few years back, Regis was overkilled. Took awhile for fans to return to the show because of the abuse. Wonder if the same is starting to happen to DOND.

[MMM717]

Match Game PM or another run would generate much higher numbers and possibly be the highest rated classic like it should be.

If they reran this same handful of Match Game episodes in its original run, it would have bombed.

PM is perfect for "Flashback Fridays". Otherwise for days, just let the episodes that exist and have clearance all air. As it is now, it's ridiculous. I watch about twice a week now instead of every day due to this, and I love the show.

[Lingofan97]

5) DOND is struggling right now. The syndie never had close to the same appeal as the original.But the overall isn't great for DOND... Remember a few years back, Regis was overkilled. Took awhile for fans to return to the show because of the abuse. Wonder if the same is starting to happen to DOND.

That's going to happen. The Who Wants to be a Millionaire legacy on GSN has died, so will Deal or No Deal soon.

[pyramidpower14]

4) Except for GSN abusing 100 K around 2006/07, I can't recall anything like the last few years concerning rerun abuse of shows like MG, CS etc.

Also from 2002-2003, GSN rerun-abused the 1987-1988 season of $100K Pyramid exclusively (they cycled it around 4 times I think).

From March 2002 until November 2003, $100K Pyramid was on the schedule every weekday at 6:00PM, and the only episodes that were shown were the ones from the 1987-1988 season; as I said the eps. were cycled at least 4 times or so.

Then after tons of rerun abuse of the 1987-1988 eps. during the aforementioned time period, on the Monday after Thanksgiving 2003, GSN all of a sudden started showing the 1986-1987 season episodes (starting with the Teresa Ganzel/Howard Morton week) at 11:00AM weekdays, while simultaneously still showing the 1987-1988 eps. in the 6:00PM timeslot.

From December 2003 until approximately April 2004, 1986-1987 season eps. of $100K would air at 11:00AM weekdays, and 1987-1988 eps. would air at 6:00PM. Then all of a sudden one Monday evening in April 2004, the 6:00PM timeslot started showing 1986-1987 eps. as well. From this point both the 11:00AM timeslot and 6:00PM timeslot had 1986-1987 eps. of $100K being shown, until June 2004 when the show was removed from the schedule altogether for a while.

In April 2005, the $100K Pyramid returned to the daily schedule and aired in the mornings at 11:00AM; once again the 1986-1987 season was shown, and it was this season that was shown exclusively (rerun abused 3-4 times) until the show left the daily schedule in Spring 2007 to be replaced by Weakest Link.

Then of course, both Pyramids returned in March 2009, and the 1987-1988 eps. of the $100K version were shown once again, and continue to be shown until this day.

Therefore, looking at the history of the entire network, the 1987-1988 season of $100K Pyramid may actually be one of the worst rerun-abused "classics" of all, even worse than the 1986-1987 season.

All this being said, it's long overdue that GSN picks up the 1985-1986 season of $100K; it hasn't been seen in over ten years, except for select episodes in a New Year's marathon here and there.

[billycw]

Yeah...I recall some of those, but all except the 03-05 didn't get the lenght of the rerun abuse 25K, MG, CS has had for the last 3 years. The last 3 are new "watermarks' for GSN Groundhog Day.
Know Pyramid is limited by seasons in available versions.....100 K 3 years , 25 K only has about 2 yaers available....but the only justification I can give is that Pyramid makes people think, so the games aren't as easy to recall like a brain dead game like DOND. Also, 100 K had the tournaments, so it's easier to remember who won or who made the Final 3.

I enjoy 25 K because the celeb players from the 80's were still at the "top" of their game. Nipsey and Soupy, for example, didn't have the sharp skills in 100 K like they did in previous incarnations. We don't get to see Soupy during 10 or 20 K, so most people don't recall how good he was. By 100 K, he really slowed down.

[pyramidpower14]

I enjoy 25 K because the celeb players from the 80's were still at the "top" of their game. Nipsey and Soupy, for example, didn't have the sharp skills in 100 K like they did in previous incarnations.

Yeah, I would agree that Soupy wasn't the greatest on the $100K Pyramid, although he only appeared 4 times throughout the run (3 of the times being in the 1987-1988 season and one time in the 1986-1987 season). Soupy had zero Winners Circle wins in all of his $100K Pyramid appearances. After watching a $20K Pyramid episode on YouTube earlier, I realized that there is definitely a difference between the 70s Soupy and the 1987-88 Soupy in terms of quickness and cleverness when it comes to clue-giving. Soupy's worst appearance on $100K was probably that week in November 1987 when he went up against Shelley Smith and only won one game all week, although Shelley Smith being the master she was usually kicked the a** of anyone she went against so you can't hold Soupy to the fire too much.

In terms of Nipsey, I think he actually was still pretty good when it came to the $100,000 Pyramid. During his one appearance on $100K against Lois Nettleton in late August 1987, he had two $10,000 wins, including one that got Lynn Davis into the 8th tournament at the last minute. During his December 1985 appearance against Teresa Ganzel (Teresa hadn't fully reached her potential as a player at this point yet), Nipsey pulled off three $10,000 wins IIRC. So unlike Soupy, I think Nipsey Russell still had the wits during his 1980s appearances on both versions of Clark's Pyramid. If Nipsey ever looked slow on the $100K version, it was likely because he was often playing against Lois Nettleton for whatever reason on this version, and by the late 1980s, Lois had become one of the best players Pyramid had to offer and was tough competition for any celebrity player.

[pzimm7778]

Was 25K Pyramid only on for 2 years? If not, why are there only 2 years available?

[TPIR75]

Was 25K Pyramid only on for 2 years? If not, why are there only 2 years available?

The $25,000 Pyramid was on CBS from 1982-1988, cancelled for Blackout, then brought back for 13 more weeks in 1988.

[pzimm7778]

The $25,000 Pyramid was on CBS from 1982-1988, cancelled for Blackout, then brought back for 13 more weeks in 1988.

Yeah I didn't think it was around for only 2 years. So, why are only 2 years available? I know they couldn't have been wiped because I remember them on USA Network.