Live Earth Concerts Bomb on UK TV (Many Complaints on Foul Language Used) , And NBC’s US Saturday Night Ratings Lower Than Usual , But The Internet Sets Streaming Records – Maybe Viewers Thought The Pussycat Dolls Wiggling Their Bottoms And Lecturing Us On The Environment Was Just Too Much?

Philip M. Stone - July 10, 2007

Live Earth was supposed to set television history – nine shows on seven continents with 150 of the best music acts around – surely that had to be a global TV ratings extravaganza attracting two billion viewers? But the first ratings from the US and the UK shows it all to be one terrific TV flop, but it set records for online streaming.

A CNN anchor, Lola Ogunnaike, probably caught the viewing public’s mood best.“ A lot of people think it's a bit hypocritical. I mean, celebrities are some of the least eco-friendly people on the face of the planet. They say that they are interested in the environment, but you also have tours that not only guzzle a huge amount of electricity, but the gas, the tour buses, the entourages, the private jets, that all contributes to, you know, the carbon consciousness that everyone is so obsessed with right now. And they are some of the least eco-friendly people on the planet. So, to have them say, ‘People, you know, recycle,' use electricity -- you know, electricity-efficient light bulbs. People aren't really trying to hear that from Madonna when she's got a fleet of cars sitting in her driveway.”

And the ratings seemed to back just that. In the UK the BBC devoted more some 15 hours to the coverage, but the ratings were really poor --  the afternoon coverage drawing just 900,000 viewers, it grew to around 2.7 million in the evening and by the time Madonna hit the London stage for the finale it was up to around 4.5 million, a 25% audience share.

Compare those numbers with the 10.5 million that the first such global concert, Live Aid, drew in 1985, and even the week before Live Earth the special concert in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, commemorating the 10th anniversary of her death, at the same London venue drew a massive 11.5 million viewers.

What is it they say, “You can fool the public some of the time, but you can’t fool them all the time!”

One problem the UK coverage didn’t need was the foul language uttered by such artists as Phil Collins, Johnny Borrell, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais, and Madonna. The BBC admitted it got more than 100 complaints, especially since the swearing started around 1:30 p.m. when the young kiddies were watching, and all the BBC could say was, “We asked artists not to swear but sometimes they get carried away. We are very sorry for any offense caused.”

If that language had made it live on NBC’s coverage the Federal Communications Commission would have been in “fine” heaven even though the courts recently ruled that TV could not be blamed for artists using such language slips in live events.

The UK was not isolated in rotten TV ratings. The same was true in the US where NBC had devoted its cable networks to its coverage let along the Saturday night network coverage.

According to the Nielsen overnights, the concert averaged a paltry 0.9 adults 18-49 rating which is about 18% less than the network managed the week before when it showed series repeats.

That 0.9 translated into about 2.7 million viewers, well below CBS’ average of 5.2 million for regular programming. Maybe Saturday night is not the best night to try and get a young TV audience since the audience left at home is mostly Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa while the young are out doing their thing.

The dismal ratings also showed that there are limits to continual  promotion.You couldn’t turn on a TV last week without seeing Al Gore somewhere promoting the concerts. So it wasn’t that people didn’t know what was going on, and probably not that they didn’t appreciate the talent on offer, but perhaps the hypocrisy was just too much. Again quoting CNN’s Ogunnaike, “ Frankly, I don’t want to hear about environmental causes from the Pussycat Dolls.”

Variety also took the concerts to task. “The producers of the televised concerts owe viewers an explanation (or an apology) for the stink left behind in the wake of nearly 50 hours of programming. The concerts might advocate reusable resources, but why did anyone think that recycling Live 8 coverage was a good idea?”

The UK’s Daily Mail pointed out, “The mounds of rubbish (trash) left behind by 65,000 concert-goers at Wembley (London) further tarnished the event’s green credentials. Organizers claimed most of the waste would be sorted and recycled but the Daily Mail saw little evidence of that taking place.”

And yet TV’s ratings debacle was a huge success for  Microsoft’s MSN portal that said the show generated more than 10 million streams, surpassing the previous record set by the Live 8 concerts in 2005 that were held to fight poverty.

Once question is defining what that 10 million figure actually means. It can’t be translated as unique visitors because there is nothing to stop a visitor coming many times to stream a particular performance. And the likelihood is that the number of streams will increase significantly over the next few days as emails are sent out by users advising their friends of what they should watch. For Live 8, for instance,  there were more than 100 million streams in the six weeks after the show and for Live Earth MSN predicts the system will see around 300 million streams when all is said and done in about six weeks.

One positive Microsoft reported was that the system stood up technically to the test.

The Internet’s viewing success could mean even more problems for TV. The MSN portal was sponsored by General Motors’ Chevrolet. GM has been actively diverting some of its TV spend to the Internet. With the success it achieved for this concert its executive suite in Detroit, and many other similar corporate suites around the world, must really be mulling over how the Internet can provide huge numbers – bigger than TV – when it comes to really big events, and the effect will last for weeks, not just the day of the program.

Perhaps the Fox News review’s last paragraph summed up the US concert in New York best and by association all of the other global concerts that day. “As far as the actual concert was concerned, walking past piles of empty cans and caravans of honking trucks, one got the idea that Live Earth might have amounted to exactly what Bob Geldof and The Who singer Roger Daltrey predicted: a huge, offensive rock concert.”

And it seems that’s what the global TV audience thought, too.