Double Jeopardy and Optimizers

To generate further evidence for Double Jeopardy (Oxygen August 2006) effect in television serials, we examined the viewers of (5 minutes consecutive) daily primetime strips in depth. Figure 1 exhibits that there is a distinct trend of low, medium and high rated shows generating low, medium and high repeat viewer ship for successive episodes (July August).

The highest rated show needs to gather only 54% audience to retain its rating levels where as the lowest rated shows need to gather more than 80% new audience to retain its non existent rating levels.

Low ratings definitely point out towards audience fragmentation but as discussed in the current issue (Oxygen July 06 and August 06) increases sellers in the market. Also new audiences walking into successive episodes present an opportunity of reach accumulation across the entire spectrum of programs and genres.

A high rated show accumulates its audiences very fast and hence is easier to plan whereas a medium or a low rated show is perennially accumulating audiences (at a much lower level) as exhibited by figure 2.

The optimization process driven by lowest-cost-per-incremental-reach- point does exactly this, identifies such low cost low reach data points and starts building on it upwards. Others conduct non-linear searches across as many schedule searches as possible.