When an emotionally congruent schedule helps improve television ratings

THE SITUATION:

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Low viewership and television ratings are dreaded by all media creators and distributors; and with new media content being constantly released, networks can easily replace shows with higher performers. The pressure to improve audience engagement and viewership after a disappointing first season often leads to an insurmountable situation resulting in cancellation.

Our client needed to diagnose the issue with the first season in order to get a second season sold to its broadcast network client. As early adopters of our proprietary tool EmotionalDNA® (eDNA), they were confident eDNA could help them turn the ship around and hired us to more deeply consult with them on this important sales effort.

MAGID APPROACH:
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For the show’s first season, the network placed our client’s show after a highly rated program, hoping the viewers would carry over.

Using eDNA, we were able to take stock of all programming on the network was running at an emotional level – from the viewers’ perspective. Our eDNA findings illustrated the original lead-in show was emotionally discordant from the new program – with a 40% emotional match, losing viewers that might otherwise prefer emotional congruence. Magid recommended optimizing the show’s schedule to find a lead-in with a higher emotional match with specific recommendations on programs with higher emotional congruence.

PROJECT DELIVERABLES:
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» EmotionalDNA mapping
» Program and sales consulting

RESULTS:
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By mapping the emotional landscape of the network’s content, we were able to optimize the scheduling of our client’s program by placing it in a different slot behind a lead-in with a higher emotional match of 78%. In its new timeslot, our client’s show ultimately surpassed the ratings of its more emotionally similar lead-in.