March 28, 2024

‘Downton Abbey’ Audience Swells for Season’s First Episode

Five million viewers, surpassing the Season 2 premiere? Maybe six million, even more than the Season 2 finale? Did anyone dare bet seven million?

No. Nobody did. Sunday’s premiere, though, attracted at least 7.9 million viewers, exceeding everyone’s estimation — and catapulting PBS above commercial broadcasters like ABC and NBC, at least for a night.

“Not since the premiere of 1992’s ‘Civil War’ have we seen numbers like this,” Craig Reed of TRAC Media Services, a consultant for public television stations, said.

The high viewership on Sunday night indicated that followers of the program’s first two seasons tolerated the delay of months that separated the British and American broadcasts of the third season, despite online spoilers and illegal streams of the show, and that an avalanche of positive publicity for “Downton Abbey” had generated some new fans.

Whether they’ll come back for six more Sundays in a row remains to be seen. Even more uncertain is whether PBS can capitalize on the sudden rush of interest by raising pledges from new viewers and persuading them to come back for other productions.

“Masterpiece,” a co-producer of “Downton” with the British company Carnival Films, is already thinking about how to promote its next series, “Mr. Selfridge,” which starts in March. And other stations across the country, some of which organized viewing parties for the “Downton” premiere, are “trying to remind people what else is on public TV,” said Paula Kerger, chief executive of PBS.

The second season of “Downton” garnered about 4.2 million viewers when it arrived in the United States at this time last year, and had gained about a million more by the end of the season. PBS expected the third season to capture even more, but Ms. Kerger was still surprised when she looked out of her Washington apartment window on Sunday night and saw “Downton” on in “probably three-fourths” of her neighbors’ homes. “I know this sounds very ‘Rear Window,’ ” she said on Tuesday, laughing.

Her sample was inordinately interested in the Crawley family, but so, too, was the rest of the country: while “Downton Abbey” was on, PBS outperformed Fox, ABC and NBC, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings. CBS still ranked No. 1 for the night with of “The Good Wife,” at 10 million viewers, and “The Mentalist,” at 10.7 million.

That’s partly a testament to savvy scheduling on PBS’s part. Although some fans of the series were upset by the decision to delay the American premiere for four months beyond the British start date, it placed “Downton” in a “very sweet spot,” said Rebecca Eaton, the executive producer of “Masterpiece.” For one thing, “Sunday Night Football” had the week off. For another, some of the commercial networks were running repeats.

Ms. Eaton noted that if “Downton” had started stateside in the fall, it might have been swamped by all the new dramas on the commercial networks. Furthermore, the attention paid to the show — and maybe even the spoilers that American fans had to tiptoe around for much of the fall — might have spurred more people to catch up by watching past episodes on PBS.org.

Ms. Eaton acknowledged that the long delay irritated some fans, but also said she wondered, “Does frustration turn into anticipation, which turns into buzz, which turns into a large audience?”

On that point, a spokeswoman for the Twitter social networking site said it measured 10 times as much conversation around “Downton” as around the only two higher-rated shows on Sunday, “The Good Wife” and “The Mentalist.”

“It’s like with the Olympics,” Ms. Kerger said. “People knew what the outcome was, but there were still record numbers of people who were watching at night, because they wanted to have that collective experience.”

Mr. Reed, the consultant, said that the “Civil War” documentary series by Ken Burns “produced about four times the typical number of prime-time viewers for PBS” back in the 1990s, while Sunday’s premiere averaged “about five times the usual number.”

“This is significant and encouraging for PBS, because it demonstrates that in this day and age a niche broadcaster can still have an impact on the national psyche,” he said in an e-mail.

“Having this kind of success increases PBS’s chances of doing it again in the future,” he added. “Program suppliers will see PBS as a factor and a solid choice.”

Commercial networks are racing to add shows about class and wealth like “Downton”; last weekend, when Oprah Winfrey’s cable channel, OWN, had a press preview of a Tyler Perry production called “The Haves and the Have Nots,” about the relationship between a rich family and its housekeeper’s poor family, it was instantly labeled “OWN’s ‘Downton.’ ”

Back in November, NBC ordered a drama called “The Gilded Age” from Julian Fellowes, the creator of “Downton.”

For public television, too, “the success of ‘Downton’ has increased the number of projects in the pipeline like it,” Ms. Eaton said.

Fear not, “Downton” fans: a fourth season is in production.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/arts/television/downton-abbey-audience-swells-for-seasons-first-episode.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

A New Site Intended to Serve People in Recovery

Now, Maer Roshan, the founder of Radar magazine, is betting that addiction is also a good and potentially profitable proposition for the Web.

TheFix.com, a Web site that combines feature writing, news, video and Zagat-like reviews of rehab facilities, will go live on Monday. It is the latest endeavor for Mr. Roshan, who became a fixture in New York media as an editor for Talk and New York Magazine, but then fell out of the public eye after Radar folded as a magazine for the third time.

By his own account, it was a rough exit from public life. Radar’s Web site was sold to American Media Inc., leaving Mr. Roshan with no role. He moved to Los Angeles and spent some time in recovery for alcohol abuse, where he came to realize that the vast community of people trying to overcome their addictions had no media outlet that spoke directly to them.

“These are people who are united by their values, united by their mission; there’s a common lingo, common literature,” Mr. Roshan said in a recent interview at a cafe down the block from the sober living facility in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn called The Core Company where TheFix.com has its offices for the moment. “There’s an actual community here.”

By the estimation of Mr. Roshan and his business partners, it is a community that advertisers will discover is large and eager to spend: “The demographics are really good,” he said. Back-of-the-envelope math suggests that a Web site catering to people in recovery could be a huge business. Various surveys put the number of people who enter treatment each year from two million to four million. At costs that easily run tens of thousands of dollars a month, often paid out of pocket, the money spent getting sober is staggering.

Allison Floam, a co-founder of TheFix.com, said, “This is the largest market you’ve never heard of.”

As a niche publishing enterprise, TheFix.com (tagline: “Addiction and recovery, straight up”) is not unlike any media that play to a specific demographic with hopes of drawing in the kind of specific, highly engaged audience that advertisers desire. The Fix sees tremendous potential in the buying power of people in recovery.

“They’re people who have lots of new disposable income because they’re not spending it on crack or Absolut,” Mr. Roshan said. “They are people who are newly invested in their health and well-being. They are people who have a lot of time on their hands that they didn’t have before.”

The Fix plans to reach out to health clubs like Equinox and Crunch; beverage sellers like Poland Spring and Vitaminwater. Coffee makers like Starbucks are on their list too because recovering addicts often develop a taste for coffee. The site’s founders are also eager to attract travel advertising.

There is little doubt that recovering addicts are a large audience. But whether advertisers have any desire to cater to them as a distinct group is uncertain.

“That’s the question: Is putting your brand in the environment of that condition and mind-set going to create an association that you want, and one that’s scalable enough that there’s a business reason to do it?” said Andy Chapman, director of digital trading for Mindshare, a media-buying agency. “Because you can reach them in other places. And that may be good enough.”

The creators of The Fix are trying to soothe advertisers in part by not presenting addiction as an exploitative spectacle. But The Fix does not intend to ignore stories of Hollywood celebrities who have often explosive spirals into substance abuse. Nor does it intend to treat addiction as purely serious fare. In fact, one of its first features is a gallery of what its editors have deemed history’s messiest celebrity breakdowns.

“We’re certainly not looking for any kind of Victorian freak show element,” said Joe Schrank, a co-founder of TheFix.com who worked with Mr. Roshan to develop the idea for the site, and founder of The Core Company. “However, I think you have to have a sense of humor about it. It’s a very delicate line.”

The Fix will publish serious essays by big names like Susan Cheever. There is an article questioning the effectiveness of a new vaccine that purports to curb cocaine cravings. Experts have recorded videos that offer advice on managing addictions.

“My hope for The Fix is that it’s giving much more texture to the comprehensive life — not just the crisis that thrusts people into treatment,” Mr. Schrank said. “The story arc in the media is always the same. It’s Charlie Sheen freak show, or a guy went to rehab, redeemed himself and became a rehab counselor. When the truth is it’s as individual as a human thumbprint.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=41323a56f0789d617561b77526ada945