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THE MEDIA POLL Number 2 January 10, 1997 _______________________________________________________
By John Marcus
"Oh God--it's not just a one-off. . . ."
Featuring:
-LENO VS. LETTERMAN: DOES NEWS COVERAGE EQUAL RATINGS? -POPULAR ARTS IN REVIEW: TELEVISION: THE DEATH OF SUSAN
Plus:
-YOU HEARD IT THERE FIRST: FUTBOL MAMAS *and* -THE MEDIA POLL 10: U.S. POLITICIANS
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LENO VS. LETTERMAN: DOES NEWS COVERAGE EQUAL RATINGS?
HOUSEHOLDS, EYEBALLS, BOX OFFICE, bums on seats, mindshare. Isn't the entertainment industry eloquent when it comes to measuring its own performance? And then there's the comparatively dull political yardstick: turnout.
And in their pursuit of generating households, eyeballs, box office, etc., all the players in Hollywood, Washington, Tin Pan Alley, and Broadway are after the same thing: exposure. Armies of publicists and spin doctors bombard the print and broadcast press with endless volleys of sound bites and press releases, aiming big and hoping anything might stick, because there are hoary old maxims about the "Power of the Press" that say "Any Publicity is Good Publicity." Wasn't it this truism that made erstwhile presidential candidate Ross Perot go and buy half-hour prime time infomercials so he could campaign via the media, and not the stump, by unleashing a kind of old school spam?
THE MEDIA POLL WONDERS about all this. Although I have experienced the effect of a single airing of an unknown tune on BBC Radio upon the London record-buying public (long ago at Our Price on the King's Road), and been astonished by the importance of Access to Eardrums over It's Got a Good Beat and You Can Dance to It, I've always questioned the ability of "publicity, any publicity," to automatically, unquestionably, spike the charts in one's favor. In the corporations of America, wouldn't Marketing then report to Media Relations, and not the other way around?
WHEN EXACTLY DOES DAVE LETTERMAN COME INTO THIS?
Hold on.
NIELSEN RATINGS, THE TOP 40, the New York Times Best Sellers List: to get there you need exposure, and some of the best comes in column inches. But is it true? Is *any* publicity good publicity? And, if so, can quantitative press coverage predict ratings success? Let's look at Letterman and Leno. (In future Media Polls, we'll look at the pop charts and 1996 election results.)
Coverage in Top 50 U.S. Newspapers
(number of mentions)
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Year Letterman Leno Carson O'Brien
---- --------- ----- ------ -------
1996 5,645 3,828 1,226 896
1995 7,051 4,000 1,253 879
1994 8,643 3,944 1,906 1,222
1993 7,797 5,170 2,288 1,450
1992 3,994 4,370 4,703 2Dave gets more press than Jay--period. Ever since 1993, when he pulled off something that hadn't been achieved in decades (launching a successful late night talk show on a network other than NBC), Letterman has been written about 45 to 119 percent more often than Leno each year in the top 50 U.S. newspapers. In 1992, when he was still stuck in the 12:30 slot on NBC, Leno's star shone brighter than his for the only time in the last five years.
THAT WAS THE YEAR Johnny Carson departed the Tonight Show after 30 years, and the year Leno endured his baptism of fire. The following year, Letterman left NBC and started a new 11:30 franchise on CBS, causing an unforeseen level of network hype, media hysteria, and genuine audience interest surrounding the changing of the late night guard. As Dave faced down his friend and rival before millions of new viewers, seemingly introducing a new golden era of late night television, his press nearly doubled, far surpassing anything generated previously by either Leno or Carson, and, curiously, has remained at popcult superstar levels ever since. (In 1996, three years later, Letterman received 47 percent more coverage than Leno, and a whopping 530 percent more than his replacement on NBC, Conan O'Brien.)
WELL OVER A YEAR after Leno surpassed Letterman in the ratings, Dave still reigns in print. A "media darling" if ever there was one (only journalists could be so affectionate about someone so cranky), David Letterman's story in 1993 somehow topped Jay Leno's the previous year. While the latter triumphed in their battle to succeed the most powerful man in the business--effectively getting the boss's job--the former not only survived what many thought had been a near-fatal career defeat, he came back on his own terms, in his own time, and literally challenged his opponent once again on a newly level playing field. His story was so good it was impossible to resist, and in the meantime, despite the fact that his show and network are now floundering bigtime, Letterman's still perceived to be the more vivid character, the more quotable subject, and the bigger star.
Which is enough to get you into the funny papers, but apparently not enough to hold onto eyeballs.
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YOU HEARD IT THERE FIRST
First known use (in a major newspaper) of "Soccer Mom(s)," voted Word of the Year for 1996 by the American Dialect Society, a group of publicity-savvy linguists:
The San-Diego Union Tribune November 29, 1985
Interestingly, two of the first three uses of "soccer mom" were in the Union Tribune, indicating that both youth league soccer and the idea of "soccer moms" gained momentum first in southern California. In fact, for five years and with one exception, all mentions of the term occurred in either the West or the South, in papers like the Orange County Register, the Denver Post, and the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. As the chart below demonstrates, after barely registering in the 1980s, "soccer mom(s)" began to increase in usage in the early 1990s as it starting filtering through the Midwest back East.
In 1995 "soccer mom" took on its first political connotation when Sue Casey, a former aid to Gary Hart, ran for the Denver City Council and used it to describe herself to potential middle class voters in a Denver Post story. Around the same time, an Orange County Register story about a Dana Point, Calif. mayoral race mentioned "the Little League dads and soccer moms" active on a local political action committee. The phrase really took of, though, during the presidential election campaign of 1996.
On July 1, Time Magazine, in an article on the changing face of First Ladydom, actually called Hillary Clinton a soccer mom. Seventeen days later, the Washington Post quoted Republican National Committee spokesman Ed Gillespie saying, on reports of increased youth drug use during the first Clinton term, "take that record out to the soccer moms in the suburbs." The Post went on to define "soccer mom" as "the overburdened, middle income working mother who ferries her kids from soccer practice to scouts to school." It cited soon-to-be- disgraced Democratic campaign advisor Dick Morris, ironically, as the force behind President Clinton's play for this supposed constituency as a family values strategy. A few more mentions over the next few weeks led to Newsweek's August 26 piece, "The Fight Over Soccer Moms," which outlined Bob Dole's apparently long odds in that battle and served as a clarion call for a thousand more articles over the remaining four months of 1996.
Year "Soccer Mom"
Mentions
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1996 1440
1995 56
1994 33
1993 23
1992 14
1991 12
1990 8
1989 1
1988 3
1987 1
1986 3
1985 1Source: Dow Jones News/Retrieval full text database of over 3,000 publications --------------------------------------------
POPULAR ARTS IN REVIEW: Television
THE DEATH OF SUSAN
SEINFELD IS STILL perhaps the only show on TV that consistently breaks rules on purpose, and for this it deserves our gratitude (even if we're getting a little tired of it). For TV's arch conservatism in the rules and formulae department is what keeps it ever stale- and keeps us from watching as much as we discerning viewers might watch otherwise if more programs dared to step out-of-the-box (to use a horrible pun dressed as a smarmy clich�).
One could make the argument that Seinfeld's one formula-related sin is that it managed to create a new one--one that's now been milked to death by other shows on the same network (you know which ones I mean). But that's a whole other topic.
THE SHOW ABOUT NOTHING--the one with real-time scripts, unbelievable reversals of fortune, and at least one despicable primary character--went one step beyond at the end of last season when it killed off Susan, George's fiancee.
Or did it? I can't decide.
The deal is this: George buys cheap envelopes for wedding invitations to save money, they are toxic, and Susan dies. George, who had been desperate but unable to get out of the impending lifetime commitment, shrugs his shoulders and immediately begins dating. It is obvious he is glad the way things turned out between him and Susan, and his friends, including Jerry, show themselves to be only fractionally more compassionate.
ON THE ONE hand, I agree with those--including quite a number of serious Seinfeld heads on the alt.tv.seinfeld newsgroup--who found this particular TV rule breakage to be utterly unfunny (I think the rule is: "Don't laugh at and then totally ignore the fact that a primary character is dead"). It was ugly, cold, cynical, stupid, and juvenile.
But then one has to ask: could the writers have expected any other response? Are they (the writers) so ugly, cold, and cynical that they thought we would laugh?
The answer to both questions, I hope, is "no."
RATHER THAN to laugh at the unfunny, could it be that the intent of Seinfeld's writers (who are, after all, inveterate rulebreakers) was to purposely make Jerry and company ugly, cold, cynical, stupid, etc.? This is my theory. But the question remains: why? Either they are motivated by professional mischief-making on the merely daring level they have exhibited all along, or else they are being truly subversive and testing just how low a popular sitcom--and its arch loyalist fans--can go.
What's next? Crazy Joe Devola pulls a Dahmer on Newman, but Elaine and George are too preoccupied with fighting over his vacant apartment to be anything but non-plussed by the heinous crime?
THAT would test us.
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THE MEDIA POLL 10
The Media Poll 10 ranks quantitative press coverage of personalities in various categories. Over the next several weeks, we'll look back at 1996 to see which politicians, actors, and generic celebrity types generated the most fishwrap. This week's category: politicians.
1996 Top 10 U.S. Politicians (by number of mentions in the top 50 U.S. newspapers) -------------------------------- 1 Bob Dole 70,310 2 Bill Clinton 39,801 3 Newt Gingrich 24,743 4 Ross Perot 15,637 5 Pat Buchanan 15,221 6 George Bush 14,031 7 Ronald Reagan 13,021 8 Al Gore 12,342 9 Steve Forbes 11,851 10 Jack Kemp 10,377
N.B. There is nothing scientific about the Media Poll, but Jeez, so much for the liberal media bias, eh?
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NOTE TO READERS
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FUTURE MEDIA POLL TOPICS
-The Ebonic Woman -The Bob Dole Effect -Madonna or Homelessness: Which Has the Better Publicist?
Got an idea for a Media Poll topic? Email: [email]
ABOUT THE MEDIA POLL
THE MEDIA POLL uses online news databases to measure media trends, coverage of current events, and the news organizations that cover them. The Media Poll delves deep into the data warehouses of vast, electronic news archives, presses a few buttons and throws a few switches, and then steps back--ultimately attempting to make sense of the "findings," whether any sense is there to be made or not. Sometimes, the "findings" just speak for themselves. The Media Poll also includes "Popular Arts In Review," which offers concise reviews of pop music, TV, movies, and other garish ephemera; "You Heard it There First," tracing the media-based origins of contemporary catch phrases and slang; and The Media Poll 10, a recurring ranking of people, places, and things as measured by quantity of news coverage.
The Media Poll is Copyright 1997 by John Marcus