Would You Expect Snippets to Increase TV Ratings?

Posted by: Heather Green on October 04

I stopped reading when I hit a sentence in story in the NYTimes about the latest SNL online video hit, “I Ran so Far Away.”

Here’s the sentence: “However popular, such films—including Lazy Sunday, a rapping homage to the Chronicles of Narnia—have not appeared to raise the ratings of the show itself.” In fact, the ratings are down from last year.

I don’t know about you, but that felt backward when I was reading it and feels backward now that I am typing it in. Frankly, I don’t have much faith in the studies that purport to show that online clips help boost the ratings of shows. Teasers about a show? Yeah, I buy that. But not these kinds of fully formed little skits.

Makes me appreciate the conundrum that NBC et Co. must be in. But it reminds me that the only option they have is to try to figure out how to make money as these little skits skip around the Internet. At the same time, it makes me feel a little tired. Because, really, we know this by now…

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