Daytime Talk Shows -- Growing Appeal and Advertiser Value

by Henry Schafer

As we move into the new broadcast television season this fall, more well known TV stars are targeting the Monday-Friday daytime audience with entertaining talk shows.  This is good news for viewers who can follow their favorite TV celebs into this engaging daily environment and good news for advertisers who will have their commercials exposed to more attentive viewers, especially females, yielding greater impact and lift for brand image and purchase intentions.

Over the past four seasons this popular daypart has seen the talk show category grow from 13 or 14 shows up to 17 going into the current 2012-13 season.  With this growth has come a variety of entertaining "newbie" talent to this genre such as Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric, Steve Harvey and the return of a revitalized Ricki Lake.

As can be seen in the following chart, since the 2008-09 season, the average Positive Q Score for daytime talk shows among the key viewer segment of women 18-49 has consisitently grown 9 points from 11% up to 20%, while the Negative Q Scores have steadily declined 11 points to a four year low of 22%.
			Women 18-49
			Positive	Negative
			Q Score	Q Score
			%	%
		Fall 2008	11	33
		Fall 2009	17	27
		Fall 2010	19	25
		Fall 2011	20	22

Let's see what the next few months hold in store, as viewers become more acquainted with the "newbie" talk show hosts this season and how this influx of engaging talent will impact the advertising environment.

We will be measuring these developments in our upcoming TVQ surveys this fall with a number of reports to be issued during the October-December 2012 viewing period.

Stay tuned.