'Buying
 spots on local stations in and around a hit show enables an advertiser to take advantage of local market delivery
 patterns'

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 
You're wrong if you guessed
'Millionaire' is a big draw in Vegas

Show's popularity varies widely from city to city

By Dave Lindorff

    What do Las Vegas and Oklahoma City have in common?
   The answer is: Not much of anything and even less when it comes to viewership of  "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"
     And if you think "Millionaire" is hot in Vegas and shunned in Oklahoma, you're wrong.
    Oklahomans love "Millionaire." In fact, the state's largest city has the highest viewership of the show in the country, with a household rating of 32.
     Las Vegans apparently have better games to play. That city has a rating of just 14.1, among the lowest in the nation. (Phoenix and Jacksonville tie for that honor at 10.2.)
     "Maybe the residents of Las Vegas are trying to make their millions in other ways," says a spokesman at the Television Bureau of Advertising, which released the study.
       The TVB looked at 45 metered markets measured by Nielsen Media Research during the Jan. 27 airing of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" and found a startlingly wide variation in viewerships from city to city.
         A TVB spokesman says there is no easy explanation for the wide disparity in ratings for the same show in different cities and different parts of the country.
    "We're not a homogenous nation," he says, "and tastes vary, whether it's for spaghetti or a TV program."
    One possibility is that ABC's affiliates vary in their local ratings.
    Local station preferences can be heavily influenced by such things as the quality and popularity of local news programming.
     Just the same, the lists are useful.
      Harold Simpson, vice president for research at TVB, says knowing about the wide local variations in the ratings for "Millionaire" should be useful to those advertisers and markets who are trying to target their messages geographically.
  "Buying spots on local stations in and around a hit show enables an advertiser to take advantage of local market delivery patterns," he says. 
    Among the other top cities for "Millionaire" besides Oklahoma City were Pittsburgh, with a 25.3 rating, Dallas/Ft. Worth, with a 24.2 rating, and Atlanta with a 24.2.
 Down near  the bottom of the list along with Jacksonville were Memphis and San Francisco/Oakland, each with a 12.0 rating, San Diego, with an 11.1, and Phoenix, with a 10.3.
    The household rating is the percentage of television households in the Nielsen sample that had the show on at least one TV.






 Here's the full list of the top 10 cities and the bottom 10:

Highest ratings:

 Oklahoma City    32.0
 Pittsburgh     25.3
 Dallas/Ft. Worth    24.2
 Atlanta      24.2
 Cincinnati     23.8
 Philadelphia     23.3
 Raleigh/Durham    22.4
 Orlando/Daytona Beach   22.3
 Kansas City     22.2
 West Palm Beach/Ft. Pierce  22.0

Lowest ratings:

 Las Vegas     14.1
 Denver     14.1
 Tampa/St. Petersburg   13.5
 St. Louis     12.3
 Sacramento/Stockton   12.8
 Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem 12.2
 Memphis     12.0
 San Francisco/Oakland   12.0
 San Diego     11.1
 Phoenix     10.2
 Jacksonville     10.2
 

-- Dave Lindorff covers television and research for Media Life.