Saturday, January 5, 2013

I'm bad, I'm nationwide

A couple of news items have accumulated lately on this blog about Let's Ask America. Which is a little strange because folks in most of the country have never seen the show.

Will that change? A TVNewsCheck story noted: "Warner Bros. is a partner on Let's Ask America and will take the game show into syndication if it deems the ratings on the Scripps stations are strong enough." Oh yes, those pesky numbers. Last I saw, Let's Ask America was doing 1.8-ish household ratings in its seven markets. Decent for a daytime show in today's fractured TV world. But not a slam-dunk for national syndication, especially given the old-skewing demos of traditional game shows.

Let's Ask America was first intended as a cost-cutting measure, of course. Scripps execs got tired of paying the fees for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and rolled out the Skype cheapo on seven of their stations to save dollars. The show got some interesting numbers and now there's a little buzz about nationwide exposure.

It's an okay survey show, but they might have to make it edgier to succeed nationally. Right now Let's Ask America is all mom-and-apple-pie. Not that I have anything against mom, though I prefer peach pie. But Family Feud demonstrated that some spice can help the numbers.

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