From Pam's House Blend Blog:
The industry standard (I used to produce television commercials in a previous life) is 22 minutes of revenue (commercials) per 60 minute block of air time. TIVO any major 60 minute broadcast and check it out.
The "air time" of "The Young and the Restless" as measured by the online version on CBS.com is 38-39 minutes of "show" punctuated by 21-22 minutes of selling soap.
So tonite I watched the entire hour of Glenn Beck and wrote down what I saw.
Completely ignoring the fact that the entire broadcast had NO guests except Michele Malkin (who is on the Fox payroll and doesn't count) and was nothing but GB bouncing between his desk and his chalkboard while calling Van Johnson a communist, black seperatist and a threat to America's nuclear codes in the White House (really, he said that), I decided to just count the minutes.
Keep in mind that Van Johnson was one of the founders of the group which has been writing to all of Becks' sponsors and so far have gotten 44 companies pull their spots from his show. So Glenn has a bit of a personal issue with Mr. Johnson.
<snip>
Breakdown by time of Glen Beck Show
<snip>
TOTAL NATIONAL AD TIME 4:30 (or 2:15 per 30 minute air block - ads for Murdoch's own companies don't count)
This is nearly 90% lower than the industry "standard" for a comparable broadcast hour.
Rupert is going to have some sort of seizure when he sees those numbers.
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/Comment: Why sponsors dropping Beck still matters even if the companies keep their money with Fox:
No no no...here's how it works...
Ad time is like hotel rooms.
And empty hotel room night is revenue which can never be recouped.
There is only so much available time in a day for advertising to run. Advertisers buy what are called "impressions" (an impression is a measure of total viewers X total times the spot runs)
Fox only has so many impressions to sell. Period.
It would be one thing if the lost time was at 3 AM, but this is drive time, happy hour, tv over the bar, tv at the airport gate - this may not be as big as the 8PM hour, but it is important.
And it is gone. Poof.
Figure that this represents somewhere around 7-8% of Fox's available "impressions" and you begin to see what this means to the bottom line.
Yes, the advertisers are still on Fox...but they are paying for what they are getting - 8% less across the board.
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/Rolling, rolling, rolling...