From the chicagolandradioandmedia.com site:
Written by Larz
Tuesday, 02 February 2010 13:44
With a decent amount of hype preceding it, WBBM-TV premiered it's new early morning weekday show, "Monsters and Money in the Morning" this week. The show features former WSCR-AM "Monsters" Mike North & Dan Jiggetts, along side "Money" experts, Terry Savage and Mike Hegedus. One would think that a big premiere episode would do well in the ratings. Let's take a peek at the Nielsen overnight ratings for Monday and see...
WBBM-TV's "Monsters and Money in the Morning" is a two hour show, airing from 5:00am until 7:00am.
From 5:00am-6:00am, the averaged ratings yesterday for the 25-54 demographic looked like this:
WBBM-TV -- 0.1 rating / 1 share WMAQ-TV -- 0.9 rating / 9.3 share
WLS-TV -- 1.3 rating / 12 share
WGN-TV -- 1.1 rating / 11 share
WFLD-TV -- 0.5 rating / 5 share
WPWR-TV -- 0.0 rating / 0.0 share
WCIU-TV -- 0.1 rating / 1 share
From 6:00am-7:00am, the averaged ratings yesterday for the 25-54 demographic looked like this:
WBBM-TV -- 0.1 rating / 1 share WMAQ-TV -- 1.3 rating / 10.8 share
WLS-TV -- 2.3 rating / 17.5 share
WGN-TV -- 1.2 rating / 9.3 share
WFLD-TV -- 0.7 rating / 4.8 share
WPWR-TV -- 0.0 rating / 0.0 share
WCIU-TV -- 0.3 rating / 2 share
The 18-49 demographic ratings were almost identical. Basically, WBBM-TV's new show lost out to every local channel except for WPWR-TV, which was only airing infomercials. WBBM-TV's only bright spot was the first 15 minutes of the program, when they pulled in a 0.2 rating and a 2 share, thanks largely to a CBS News update program that was bringing in a 0.4 rating and a 6 share, that aired right before it.
However, the blame for this incredibly slow start cannot be placed right on the shoulders of "Monsters and Money in the Morning." WBBM-TV's early morning programming was in the gutter long before this show began, which is one of the main reasons WBBM decided to take a chance on this new show. Early morning TV viewers tend to be creatures of habit and have been watching their favorite channels each morning for a long time. It will take some time and some very creative marketing to get viewers to now give up on their habitual viewing and turn to CBS2, after so many years of not doing so. The question is, if the ratings keep this low, how long can WBBM-TV afford to wait for this experiment to succeed?