How A Lead-In and Lead-Out Can Affect An Age Skew

The Ratings Junkie

I did some ratings research, and I wanted to take a quick, very broad little look into how age skew can be affected by the lead-in of a show. Take the following examples:

60 Minutes

Here is a comparison of 60 Minutes from one week to the next one. The first week, it had local news as a lead-in, and the next, post-game coverage of an NFL Playoff game (which had a 9.7 A18-49 rating.

	January 10, 2016	January 17, 2016
A18-49	0.8	4.8
M18-34	0.4	3.7
W18-34	0.4	2.5
M18-49	0.7	5.4
W18-49	0.8	4.1

All of a sudden, 60 Minutes has boosted up to being a show where the 18-34 crowd was 50% of the 18-49, to being almost 80% of the 18-49 number. Why? Because it came on right after a huge football game, which also tends to reach a younger demographic.

Rosewood

Rosewood typically airs before Empire, which skews more towards the W18-34 demographic than any other, and hence has also seen a favorable W18-34 skew. That is, until its spring premiere without Empire pre-tune...

	December 2, 2015	Lead-Out	March 2, 2016
A18-49	1.5	4.5	0.9
M18-34	0.7	3.1	0.5
W18-34	1.5	5.0	0.7
M18-49	1.0	3.5	0.8
W18-49	1.9	5.6	1.1

As is seen, in general Rosewood's ratings have collapsed without Empire as a lead-out, but even more showing is the fact that it no longer ties the A18-49 number with the W18-34 number; in fact, the W18-34 demo is now just 78% of the A18-49 number, compared to the 100% from the past episode.

Brooklyn 9-9

Brooklyn 9-9 recently moved from the cushy "post-Simpsons post-football", as I like to call it, time slot, to Tuesdays, where it is surrounded by Grandfathered and The Grinder. Take a look at how the numbers changed:

	December 13, 2015	Lead-In	February 23, 2016	Lead-In
A18-49	1.7	2.4	0.9	0.8
M18-34	1.5	2.3	0.6	0.4
W18-34	1.4	1.4	0.7	0.7
M18-49	1.9	3.0	0.9	0.6
W18-49	1.4	1.8	0.9	0.9

Between these two dates, Brooklyn 9-9 went from a M18-34 demo 88% of the A18-49 demo, to just 66%. This is partially due to the fact that it lost its more male-skewing Simpsons lead-in and ended
up with Grandfathered as a lead-in, which has a solid W18-34 following.

Side note: The Simpsons has a younger-skewing M18-34:A18-49 ratio when aired after football than on its own, and Grandfathered has a younger-skewing W18-34:A18-49 ratio when aired after New Girl as opposed to on its own. Those are two more examples of my point.