Monday January 16, 2006

Beware The iTunes Effect

TV Week (reg. required) posts a story this morning that is sure to be one of the most cited items of the day. (As predicted.) NBC is crediting iTunes with boosting the ratings of The Office. The series had its best ratings among 18- to 49-year-olds last week, a little more than a month after the show became available as an iTunes download. While this certainly seems like powerful evidence that downloads don’t cannibalize ratings, I’m with the analyst who cautions that “we are not seeing the kind of volume yet on iTunes that would show up in a ratings bump.”

My Name Is Earl, for example, has also posted strong demos since moving, with The Office, to Thursdays. Last week—the second since the move—both shows’ ratings were up 13 percent with the 18 to 49 crowd. The difference? My Name Is Earl is not available on iTunes.

There’s an “iTunes effect” alright, but whether it’s a function of the service, or of the hype surrounding the service, remains to be seen.

Posted by jim at 04:44 AM ||