By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --As a television event, the Victoria’s Secret fashion show appears headed for the remainder bin.
The show has been buffeted by bad publicity, bad reviews and now bad numbers. Shown Sunday on ABC after several years on CBS, its audience of 3.27 million viewers was the smallest since becoming a holiday-season TV event in 2001, the Nielsen company said. The show has lost more than half its television audience in two years.
The runway-style show of models in underwear has seemed ill-suited to the #MeToo era and was hurt when the company’s head of marketing said in an interview that it would not include transgender or plus-sized models because Victoria’s Secret was selling a fantasy. The company later apologized.
After one year on ABC in 2001, the show migrated to CBS. Its viewership ranged from a high of 10.3 million in 2011 to 7.36 million in 2016, Nielsen said. Last year, however, the viewership tumbled to 5.37 million, leading to its departure to ABC.
A review of Sunday’s show in The Washington Post was headlined, “The Victoria’s Secret fashion show is too boring to even argue about.”
“The whole hour-long shindig was a bore,” wrote fashion critic Robin Givhan. “A snooze. A shrug. Oh, my Lord, it was dull.”
Givhan wrote that the TV special “was such a nonevent of excruciating cliches and non-sexiness that it’s not worth a cultural revolution. It’s a teardown. Or we could all just get out of the way and let it rot until it falls down on its own.”
There’s no immediate word from ABC about whether it will return. Even with its sinking ratings, the show got about twice as many viewers as Alec Baldwin’s Sunday-night talk show, which aired in the same time slot until it was recently moved to Saturday nights.
The television ratings were otherwise dominated by football in a week many networks turned to reruns. Of Nielsen’s 20 most-watched programs last week, there were only four scripted programs — led by NBC’s “This is Us.”
With a strong Thursday-night NFL game, Fox led all networks with an average of 8.3 million viewers in primetime. NBC had 6.9 million, CBS had 6.2 million, ABC had 4.1 million, Univision had 1.5 million, ION Television had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 1.2 million and the CW had 1.1 million.
Hallmark soared to the top of the cable news ratings with its nonstop holiday fare, averaging 2.108 million viewers in prime time. ESPN was a fraction short at 2.107 million, Fox News Channel had 2.01 million, MSNBC had 1.88 million and USA had 1.21 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.1 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.4 million.
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Nov. 26-Dec. 2. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. NFL Football: New Orleans at Dallas, Fox, 21.39 million.
2. NFL Football: L.A. Chargers at Pittsburgh, NBC, 17.83 million.
3. “NFL Pregame Show,” Fox, 12.2 million.
4. “NFL Pregame Show,” NBC, 11.91 million.
5. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 10.41 million.
6. “The OT,” Fox, 10.1 million.
7. “SEC Championship Postgame Show,” CBS, 9.93 million.
8. NFL Football: Tennessee at Houston, ESPN, 9.86 million.
9. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 9.57 million.
10. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 9.38 million.
11. “This is Us,” NBC, 8.99 million.
12: College Football: Northwestern vs. Ohio State, Fox, 8.66 million.
13. “Garth Brooks at Notre Dame,” CBS, 8.63 million.
14. “Football Night in America,” NBC, 8.53 million.
15. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 8.4 million.
16. “Christmas in Rockefeller Center,” NBC, 8.39 million.
17. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 8.152 million.
18. “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer,” CBS, 8.151 million.
19. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 7.94 million.
20. “Survivor,” CBS, 7.61 million.
ABC and ESPN are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; CBS is a division of CBS Corp.; Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox; NBC is owned by NBC Universal.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More