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Inquiring minds want to know: How did Channel 4’s new morning program on WNLO-TV, “Winging It! Buffalo Style,” do in the ratings during premiere week.
Not so hot on three of the five days.
Not even medium.
Actually, the ratings for most of the week probably would be considered a mild disappointment when you consider all the promotional time and energy that has been expended on the lifestyles, gossip and cooking show with hosts Victoria Hong, Joe Arena and Allie Hartwick.
The opener a week ago had a 2.9 rating, which is very respectable. That means that 2.9 percent of area homes were tuned in or about 20,000 households. The second hour of “Wake Up,” the show it replaced, generally scored ratings in the 2.0 range.
But you had to expect a higher than normal rating for the premiere. The big question was how many viewers would come back to watch a show with sponsored cooking segments featuring news anchors.
Day 2 on Tuesday had a 1.0 rating, which means that about two-thirds of the opening day audience disappeared. Not a good sign.
Day 3 on Wednesday had a 1.5 rating, Day 4 on Thursday a 1.4 rating.
But on Friday, the rating surprisingly spiked to a 2.5, which was in the range of the opener. Why? Haven’t a clue. Maybe viewers expected to see more about the Buffalo Sabres win over Philly in game one of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The first week averaged a 1.9, which was inflated by the 2.9 opener.
That hardly seems to justify the expense or the embarrassment of using news personnel on sponsored segments. It almost seems to justify the name I’ve heard some former staffers have placed on the show before it premiered — “A Wing and a Prayer.”
Oh, well, it is a marathon and not a sprint. After Friday’s comeback, it is only fair to give it more time to catch on before we declare it time slot suicide.
* The Sabres 5-4 loss to Philadelphia Saturday in Game 2 of their playoff series had a 17.3 rating on MSG, down from the 18.9 for the opener. Saturday’s game had a 5 p.m. start, which probably led to the decline.
A year ago, the second game of the Sabres series with Boston carried by NBC had a 20.5 local rating on Channel 2. Of course, games on broadcast channels typically get higher ratings.
* Speaking of ratings, it was amusing to read in a national newspaper that Buffalo was No. 1 when it came to a percentage increase in the ratings for ESPN’s NBA coverage. The increase was 141 percent from a year ago.
That made me wonder if Buffalo had suddenly become a big NBA town despite the lack of coverage it gets from the local TV stations.
So I called an ESPN press spokesman, who relayed the information that NBA ratings here grew from a .5 to a 1.2 this season.
As any math major would know, it is a lot easier to get a big percentage increase when the ratings are really low to begin with.
As impressive as the 141 percent gain sounds, the NBA on ESPN gets even fewer viewers than “Winging It!”
Still, it is clear that all the attention that the NBA has received from the moves of LeBron James to Miami and Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks has led to more local interest in the NBA.
The first two playoff games on ABC this weekend had solid ratings by Channel 7 standards. Miami’s win over Philadelphia Saturday had a 2.3 rating. New Orleans upset of the L.A. Lakers Sunday had a 3.0 rating.
pergament@msn.com
Alan Pergament was the television critic for The Buffalo News for 28 years. He currently is an adjunct professor at Buffalo State College and Medaille College, teaching courses in communications. He also writes a monthly column on the media for Buffalo Spree magazine.
Re: ratings increase for Wining It on Friday.
Didn’t a lot of local public schools have off on Friday? Maybe there were just more people home in the late morning to watch than most normal weekdays?
Where’s Liz Dribben when you need her, God rest her soul. What a sham. This program makes “Meet the Millers ” look like an Emmy Award winner. What’s next , Luke Moretti & Al Vaughters doing slapstick .????
Here’s my 2 sense after watching a few minutes of it:
- the 3-man team stinks. A two-person crew with Allie and a new guy with a personality would be better.
- cooking segments with a chef from NCCC?????
- having everyone on caffeine overload is ridiculous
- some people either need to drop a few or (try to hide it better)
This is what ch 4 does and seems to win with it. Always ‘up’ sometimes inapproriately so, kind bland and soft and non-threatening. Jam packed with sentiment and a vapid emotionalism.
Look at Lydia Dominick. When she was on 23 they dressed her in off-trendy outfits that looked like stuff from an after school special that tried too hard. Now on 2 she a beautiful sexy woman. Ch 4 goes soft. (No pun intended.)
Look at Amelia Segal. Beutiful face. Hot bod. 4/23 dresses her like your granny.
Winging It falls into this same soft sentimental non-threating mold that 4 is notorious for.
You should see former WIVB met Lindsay Schwarzwaelder with her new job at LEX 18 (lex18.com). Now doing the 4pm and weekend evening shows, she ended up with a complete makeover including new hairstyle, new clothing, and she looks so much better and modern. This is unlike 4/23 which basically wanted her to look 20 years older. Also, she sounds so much better in her presentation since they go longer in segments (around 4 minutes) compared to what WIVB does here in cramming too much info into less than 2 minutes.