The Ratings Game

So we had mixed results in the ratings in the first week of original programming in the Primetime game. Academia Erotica came last in its slot with only 16% of the audience and with 26% not watching. Ouch.

Coasting on the other hand did very well, getting 48% of the audience and winning its timeslot. Its competitors were admittedly rather weak. Still having a hit show did give us some bargaining power.

We managed to sell two news shows this week - Bobst Boy and The Illustrator. Coasting we sold to ABC as NBC weren’t offering us much for it.

Here are this week’s show summaries:

Coasting

Claire decides to keep quiet about Matthew’s underhanded dealings with Far-I Productions. In return she gets invited to a glamorous industry party. She gets some evil looks from her colleagues who weren’t so lucky. Beth invites herself, and the two head straight for the champagne cocktails. Later that evening she gets felt up by a coked-up Simon Cowell, who is not happy to take no for an answer and walks away with the threat to make things hard for her at work. But does he even know who she is? And who are the crazy couple hanging around with Matthew?

One liner:
Look what I found on my ass: Claire has a close encounter with Simon Cowell

The Illustrator

In the isolated coastal town of Omey, Massachussetts a man emerges from the sea late one Fall evening. He doesn’t speak. Or at least he won’t. He is carrying no identification. He gives no clue to his origin. It is not clear whether he is sane or crazy, intelligent or simple. He possesses a prodigious talent for drawing – perhaps he is an exiled artist? One man in the town agrees to shelter him until it can be determined whence he came. The townspeople are suspicious and hostile apart from his host and one young girl. Starring Jeremy [I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten that guy’s surname], and Dakota Fanning.

One liner:
A man with no history, a girl without suspicion, a town in trouble

Bobst Boy

The legend of Bobst Boy lives on in this mystery thriller series that
features the library hero fighting for his survival in his unusual
living circumstances and for answers to NYU’s biggest secrets.

Witness the innovative ways Bobst Boy, Steve Stanzak,, make
Greenwich’s most grotesque building Bobst Library home, while he finds
means to survive not paying dorm housing. But also join this young
Sherlock Holmes in his greater mission: to uncover NYU’s darkest and
deepest secrets through clues millions of books on the premise provide
him and to solve the student suicide mysteries of deceased students
whose unhappy ghosts he encounters, sometimes befriends and often
psychoanalyzes.

This week, watch Bobst Boy make a clever escape from library guards
with his backhanded knowledge of the library and help from his
depressed, but cunning phantom friends.

Now we’ll just have to see what the public likes. I’ll have to look at the ratings some more because they seem stranger in places. Sex-based shows did well on Wednesday but not later in the week. Perhaps the saturation just bored people.

22 September 2005 | primetime | Comments

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