Notes From The Newsroom: 10/27/09

By Frank Macek

It's time again for an edition of "Notes from the Newsroom" as your blogger shares some of his thoughts on our little corner of local broadcast television.

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Thanks to everyone involved in our station wide event called "Heroes Help Northeast Ohio" that took place all day on Thursday, October 22nd. Over 17 bins of food were collected and lots of cash that will provide for over 30,000 meals for our local needy. Also, 312 coats were received for area childen and a room full of toys will delight northeast Ohio children this holiday season. A big thank you from all of us at WKYC, the Cleveland Foodbank, "Coats for Kids" and "The Salvation Army" and to WKYC producer Jon Adkins who made the day so successful.

Surf in tonight (Tuesday) to WKYC.COM from 7:30 until 8 p.m. for a webcast followup to the "Road to Reform" special that aired on WVIZ last Friday Night and WKYC on Sunday morning hosted by WKYC Senior Political Correspondent Tom Beres and WVIZ's Dick Feagler. Tonight's webcast will answer the questions viewers sent in during the program. The website address to click at 7:30 pm is: www.wkyc.com

November sweeps officially start Thursday, October 29th. It will be an interesting month, especially for our late newscast after the limited success that "The Jay Leno" show has shown so far. While the show is doing what NBC promised advertisers in the time slot, the show is hurting late news lead in to affiliates across the country, including Channel 3. NBC has apparently given Jay two years to make the show go before they would pull the plug, but with NBC being courted by several corporate giants - a merger may change the equation for Jay.

Speaking of advertisers, we are beginning to see more and more in-show sponsorships appearing in various NBC programming. "The Jay Leno Show" has been pitching McDonald's Monopoly games among other adversisers...and "Saturday Night Live" was recently sponsored by Anheuser Busch. This was the first time in the show's 35 year history this has been done and left an extra 8 minutes of show time for content.

Jon Bon Jovi has inked an exclusive deal with NBC to promote his new album "The Circle." Look for Jon to perform on "Today," "The Jay Leno Show," "The Tonight Show" and "Saturday Night Live" in the coming weeks.

2009 will most likely be known as the "Year of the DVR" thanks to an all time high use of digital video recordings this year. Nielsen says about 33% of all TV households now own one and they are helping show ratings for 3 NBC programs in particular. In Nielsen's 7 day ratings that includes same day and people who watch the show sometime in the following 7 days, "Heroes" posted an additional 26.5% audience increase, "The Office" with 26.8% and "Community" with 21.0%. By comparison, "The Jay Leno Show" barely increased.

Don't forget complete Election Night coverage coming up next Tuesday, November 3rd on Channel 3 News at 11 p.m.

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