It Must Be the Neighbors Who Watch These Shows

The culmination of the November sweeps is traditionally a time for television executives to crow about ratings, attempting to maximize year-end bonuses before they make that obligatory trip to Aspen or Maui, followed by the more obligatory reshuffling of programs that invariably takes place in January.

Amid the crush of spin and self-promotion, however, we seldom pause to put a human face on sweeps, to consider the people out there--some of them our friends and neighbors--devoting sizable blocks of their waking hours to viewing material you wouldn’t want to be caught dead watching.

Granted, not all the conclusions one draws from scanning ratings data are bad, but some provide the kind of bracing jolt that can make you pause before merging onto a freeway onramp. Consider, for example, that there’s a 2.5% chance locally that someone in the car next to you watched “Jerry Springer” the night before.

Such tidbits can be gleaned from sweeps results for the 5,354,150 households that make up what Nielsen Media Research broadly defines as the Los Angeles television market (an area, by the way, that accounts for more than 5% of all U.S. homes, behind only New York City). When people talk about ratings, each one represents 1% of those homes, or almost 53,542 domiciles with a roof and TV.

These viewing estimates are just that, predicated on 450 to 500 households that willingly let Nielsen install a meter to monitor their habits. Although such a sample leaves room for error, at least no one has to figure out which side of a butterfly ballot to punch. (And no, volunteers looking to boost a favorite show are not allowed.)

So taking Nielsen’s findings at face value, what do ratings for those 5 million-some-odd homes tell us?

Perhaps the most immediate observation is just how fragmented the audience has become. In a city like Los Angeles, where there are many independent TV stations as well as dozens of channels for those who subscribe to cable or own satellite dishes, getting a substantial number of people watching the same program is no small feat.

Yet even the relative slivers of the community taking in certain series are enough to make a discerning viewer warily eye those around them in the mall or at the supermarket checkout line.

Fox-owned KTTV-TV, for instance, boasted regarding its milestone first-ever ratings victory in the morning news competition over KTLA-TV (owned by the Tribune Co., which also owns the Los Angeles Times).

From this perspective, however, the truly unsettling notion here is that taken together, 6.8% of homes in the vicinity--or more than 360,000 residences with a TV--look to these loud, irritating, laughing-milk-out-the-nose news-lite high school pajama parties as a source of news and information on any given morning.

To make matters worse, that’s just the average rating, and since people don’t watch every single day, that means an even higher percentage must tune in at least some of the time.

Suddenly, the idea that people might be too dense to successfully punch a hole in a ballot doesn’t seem all that farfetched, does it?

It gets worse. A full 2.4% of homes in what Nielsen calls the Los Angeles market area watch “Ricki Lake” at 5 p.m., and about that many consume a daily dose of pain, suffering and plain bad judgment on “Jenny Jones,” “Divorce Court” and the idiotic “relationship” show “Change of Heart.” Many of these people are eligible to vote and receive a driver’s license.

About 320,000 homes dutifully showed up daily in November to worship at the cult of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which drew better than double the audience for any competing program in its time period. Oprah bills the show as “Change your life TV,” which raises the question: Do these viewers really think the show can change their lives, and if so, shouldn’t it have done so by now?

Then again, watching “Oprah” is relatively benign when you realize it’s possible, doing a little flipping from station to station, to catch a moronic court show at any time from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the lone break being an hourlong interval at 2 p.m. between “People’s Court” and the beginning of “Curtis Court” and “Judge Joe Brown.” These days, lawyers can be seen in one of two places: Florida, or television.

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Some may also find it appalling that nearly twice as many homes--5.2% to 2.7%--watched “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” as “Late Show With David Letterman.” Ditto for “Access Hollywood” and “Entertainment Tonight,” which says as much about the deeply entrenched ratings woes of KCBS-TV, the CBS-owned station here, as anything else.

Fortunately, there are more encouraging facts and figures to be found sifting through the Nielsen data. More people watch brainy “Jeopardy!” than stick around for “Wheel of Fortune.” Reruns of “The Simpsons,” in fact, rolled ahead of “Wheel” in November to emerge as the top-rated program at 7:30 p.m.

Ratings continue to dwindle for “Jerry Springer,” a hair below the audience for Letterman. And twice as many local residents watched NBC’s clever tall guy, Conan O’Brien, as CBS’ smug frat-boy tall guy, Craig Kilborn.

The irascible “Judge Judy”--which KCBS acquired at a steep price, hoping higher ratings at 4 p.m. would help its early-evening newscasts--attracted just 2% of homes, about what KTTV averaged at the same time with the animated “X-Men” series and below the audience watching “Pokemon” or KMEX-TV’s Spanish-language talk show “Cristina.”

As for KCBS’ other resident know-it-all, “Dr. Laura” barely registered on Nielsen’s radar, reaching just 0.6% of the audience, or about 30,000 homes, in her new 2 a.m. time slot--less than the number watching “Tonight Show” reruns or infomercials on KTTV and KCAL-TV.

Of course, turn that around and you arrive at the somewhat disquieting conclusion that more than 2% of homes in the region are up and watching “Dr. Laura” or an infomercial between 2 and 3 a.m., meaning some people either really need to be morally scolded at that hour or are fascinated by a remarkable breakthrough wax product that makes cars look like new with no buffing or scrubbing.

In television, after all, it’s not just about the numbers, but how you look at them.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Wednesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.