NBC’s first-week ratings are giving NBCUniversal boss Steve Burke some much-needed ammo when it comes to closing the network’s profitability gap with rivals.
Burke, who for years has complained to Wall Street that NBCU was shortchanged when it came to retransmission fees and other revenue, told a conference last week that the media giant’s gap with rivals could be as much as $1 billion.
While his pitch in the past fell on deaf ears — in no small part because an NBC turn-around has been as elusive as unicorns — the first week of the current season shows the Peacock Network off to a flying start.
Buoyed by strong openings by the NFL, “The Voice,” and a handful of new shows such as “The Blacklist,” NBC’s primetime ratings grew 41 percent in the first four days of the season.
That’s one of the strongest growth statistics in years, and comes as every other network showed declines.
The full-week ratings come out Tuesday.
The strong start led Wall Street analyst Doug Creutz, of Cowen and Co., to title a report “Are ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Friends’ Back On?”
Veteran TV commentator Brad Adgate noted that he couldn’t remember an opening week where one network grew in double digits and the other three declined.
Adgate cautioned, though, that playback numbers and Friday performances could alter the statistics slightly.
Advertisers buy based on C3 ratings, which add in three additional days of DVR and VOD playback.
Critics would say that NBC has started out hot in the past, only to fall flat.
For example, NBC won the first 13 weeks of last season, but then flopped midseason as its shows collapsed without the aide of NFL games and “The Voice.” But the network will have The Winter Olympics come February.
“I do think the Olympics will give them a huge boost. I think they’ll finish second to CBS this season,” said Adgate. “Sports is one huge advantage they have over ABC.”
Burke has been banging the drum about just how far behind the pack his company is in both cable ad revenue CPMs and network retrans fees.
He told investors at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch conference on Sept. 11 that the NBC discount will go away in the future.
While CBS is forecast to bank $500 million in retransmission fees, NBC is expecting to see $200 million in retransmission fees this year, with 75 percent of its deals still to complete.
Kagan pegs the total retransmission pot at $2.36 billion in 2012.
NBC network talks are of course bundled with its cable assets.
There, NBCUniversal is also a laggard. The average fee for a basic cable network is 28 cents in 2013, according to SNL Kagan. Only five of NBCUniversal’s 25 cable networks command more than that.
Jimmy Schaeffler, a pay-TV consultant with the Carmel Group, however, thinks it too soon for Burke’s empire to be asking for big fee increases.