Tamar Braxton, Tamera Mowry-Housley, Loni Love,
Jeannie Mai and Adrienne Bailon
The four-week trial of The Real, the new daytime talk show from Fox, has finished its run in eight of Fox’s biggest markets: New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Phoenix, Houston, and Tampa. And the numbers are good.
Though it’s all relative, the question than studio execs–and potential advertisers–will be asking is, “Did The Real do better than whatever we were running in that space the same time last year?” And across the demographic spectrum, the answer was yes, much better. With all sort of statistical weighting and adjustments in place, The Real scored 22% above the lead-in average, and an impressive 57% better than whatever was running there in August 2013. The improvements were equally positive among the specific demographic that the stations are after: women 24-54 and 18-49, in some segments up as much as 200% compared to the previous year.
What does all this mean? It means a racially diverse and slightly wilder-than-average hour of women of color talkin’ truth can actually score in the ratings wars. All signs are good that Fox could see a nationwide roll-out of the show in the Fall of 2014 (about as soon as that can happen, given the mechanics of network daytime TV).
We’ll keep you informed.
