Internet does record numbers, TV flat

By Jeffrey Jolson

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 7/10/07 – The Live Earth worldwide rock concert series may have raised more awareness than viewership as ratings were lackluster in both the U.S. and U.K. Part of the reason may be that the primetime network segments came after 20 hours of concerts already available on cable and internet, but the bottom line was that it drew far smaller audiences than the Princess Diana tribute concert a week earlier.

The main three-hour American TV broadcast on NBC averaged a meager 2.7 million viewers, ranking as the least-watched U.S. program on Saturday night and falling below NBC’s summer prime-time Saturday average, Nielsen reported.

“I believe this is bad news not only for Al Gore but for the Green movement he leads,” said Hollywood media expert and author Michael Levine.

Even rival network ABC’s rerun telecast of the animated film “Monsters Inc” garnered a bigger audience — 3.3 million viewers. The most watched show of the evening was the CBS news magazine “48 Hours” with 6.5 million viewers.

By comparison, NBC averaged 8.8 million viewers with its hourlong broadcast of the memorial concert for the late Princess Diana the previous Sunday.

It was the same story in Britain, where BBC One coverage of the Live Earth climax at London’s Wembley Stadium, leading up to Madonna’s eagerly awaited finale, averaged 3.1 million viewers, compared with 11.4 million for the Diana tribute, according to Reuters.

In Germany, the ProSieben network registered 1 million viewers for its Live Earth telecast, accounting for a relatively healthy 6.3 percent market share.

The overall numbers amounted to a small fraction of the 2 billion people that Live Earth organizers had hoped to reach through TV, radio and Internet coverage of the event, spearheaded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to raise awareness of global warming.

The internet, with the ability to switch from country to country, act to act with just a click did a lot better.

Microsoft Corp.’s MSN said on Saturday that Live Earth concerts generated more than 9 million Internet streams, the most ever for an online entertainment event.

That number surpassed the previous record held by 2005′s Live 8 concerts to fight global poverty, MSN said. ABC’s Live 8 telecast, which also fell on a Saturday night in July, averaged 2.9 million viewers.