Jane's Addition

The Jane Pauley Show rebounded Monday after a tough first week.

NBC Universal's new talker had a good Labor day, averaging a 2.2/5 in the metered markets (minus six hurricane-challenged Florida markets--Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach and Fort Myers).

The caveats are that it was the Labor Day Holiday, plus, following a weekend of promotions, syndie shows often do better on Monday than on Friday. Still, that was up 16% over Friday's 1.9/5 average, and actually up even more than that.

Friday's 1.9/5 in 54 metered markets included some rather eye-popping numbers in a couple of Florida markets, a 9.8/14 in Miami (market number 17 on WPLG at 4 p.m. and an 11.3/20 in West Palm Beach on WPEC at 10 a.m. Trouble is, in both those markets the world-beating numbers were not for Pauley but for hurricane coverage that pre-empted the show. So, while that makes Friday a little more of a downer, it will boost the Monday percentage gain even higher.

Although Friday's number is problematic since it includes the as-yet-uncorrected hurricane numbers, it was, for the time being, also up from Thursday's 1.8/5.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.