In the early days, the popularity of a TV program was often only reflected by a long-term viewership curve. If the TV station wants to know the audience's views, it can only use newspaper questionnaires and random telephone interviews. This way of obtaining information is very inefficient and has low accuracy.

With the rise of the Internet in recent years, this situation has changed rapidly. After the broadcast of "The National Supermodel Contest", although it was not very popular in traditional media, its popularity among ordinary audiences has been very intuitively displayed on the Internet.

The Yahoo Forum's "American Supermodel Contest" section added nearly 180,000 new members in just one week. In Yahoo's search engine business, "American Supermodel Contest" has quickly become a popular vocabulary. Cindy Crawford's personal homepage has seen a sharp increase. Before the show was broadcast, her personal homepage had only more than 10,000 fans, but within one week of the show's broadcast, this number soared to 120,000, and it is still increasing rapidly.

Because the personal homepage business has just been launched, although the overall number of users is large, the relevant social networks are still in the cultivation period. Most popular figures have a personal homepage number of fans at the 100,000 level, far from the scale of hundreds of millions of fans later. Therefore, with the popularity brought by the "American Supermodel Contest", the fan scale of Cindy Crawford has far left everyone in the same industry, and even caused reports from traditional media.

A week passed quickly under the catalysis of the topic that spread unknowingly.

Although everyone was confident about the ratings of the second episode due to the audience's popularity feedback in the previous week.

However, when the ratings statistics of the second season of "American Supermodel Contest" were released, it was still overwhelming.

The highest number of viewers is 3.5 million. The average number of viewers is 2.8 million. The ratings reach 1.6, breaking all viewership records of lietime TV again.

Although the number of viewers is far from comparable to that of public relations TV stations, the ratings data of core viewers aged 18 to 49 that advertisers value most, because the audience of "The National Supermodel Contest" is concentrated on young women, and the ratings of 1.6 are even comparable to those of ordinary TV series on public TV stations.

The production and promotion of "American Supermodel Contest" and "Proud of the Skybridge" have always been closely linked.

Affected by the cumulative popularity of "American Supermodel Contest", on Thursday, the first episode of "Proud of the Sky Bridge" also achieved an average of 2.6 million viewers, and the highest number of viewers easily exceeded 3.1 million.

Although "Proud Journey" is a fashion production program, under the supervision of Eric and the "Survivor" team, this reality show is not as professional and rigid as the audience imagines. Audiences who were originally doubting the professional reality show like "Proud Journey" quickly accepted the program and talked about the pleasing feeling of the contestants' open and secret touches and the pleasing feeling of making any materials into exquisite fashions.

As the ratings rose, traditional media keenly captured the news potential of these two reality shows and began to report them one after another, which further prompted the fame of "American Supermodel Contest" and "Proud of the Skybridge" to spread rapidly.

In the following weeks, the ratings of the two reality shows showed an upward trend of running side by side, in less than a month. The average viewership of the two reality shows exceeded the 4 million mark at the same time, and the popularity of "The National Supermodel Contest" was ultimately higher than that of "Proud of the Skybridge". The highest ratings of the fourth episode even reached 4.6 million.

At the same time, in just one month, with the popularity brought by the two reality shows, more and more people began to notice lietime TV.

Because of the spread of virus-like topics like "American Supermodel Contest" and "Proud of the Skybridge", or because of curiosity, or if they want to follow up on the topics of people around them, many people chose to change the package when they found that there was no lietime TV station in their cable TV package.

As a result, lietime TV's subscribers also easily exceeded 40 million in the following month from the initial 34.5 million.

Those operators equipped with lietime TV signals are better. After obtaining user requests, they can easily change the subscription package. However, operators without lietime TV signals are not so easy to live. Among them, the most unlucky one is undoubtedly Time Warner.

Things will start when the reform plan of lietime TV was planned. After the two reality shows were confirmed, Carsonberg personally contacted senior executives of several operators such as Comcast, remote communications and Time Warner, hoping that the other party could carry the signal of lietime TV on a larger scale.

However, because lietime TV has always been unrestrained, several major operators are very cold to Carsonberg's requirements. Carsonberg lobbied everywhere, but had little effect. Until the launch of the "American Supermodel Contest", the number of subscribers increased by only 3 million.

Comcast and remote communication operators are just fine. They do not have large-scale own TV stations, increasing or decreasing the number of users of lietime TV stations. Most of the time, the reference is based on the ratings of lietime TV stations.

But Time Warner is different. After learning about Firefly Group's reform plan for Lietime TV, considering that once Lietime TV rises, it will definitely compete with B-TV, which also faces young audiences under Time Warner. Therefore, Time Warner not only did not cooperate to increase the user scale of Lietime TV, but instead reduced the user scale of Lietime TV by changing the package before the fall period. Moreover, what is even more insidious is that some of the users cut by Time Warner are concentrated in the major cities of New York and Los Angeles.

Fashion women in these metropolitan cities in Los Angeles and New York are the most promising user groups of the two reality shows, "The All-American Supermodel Contest" and "Proud of the Skybridge". After hearing this news, Katsenberg called directly to scold the head of Time Warner Cable Department.

However, maybe it is just right for the words to settle the accounts after autumn.

This autumn has not passed yet. Time Warner has already suffered retribution for his tricks.

If "American Supermodel Contest" and "Proud of the Skybridge" did not become popular, then for the 800,000 users whose lietime signal was cut off, lietime TV will naturally be dispensable, and no one will care about anything.

But the current situation is far beyond everyone's expectations. With the progress of the broadcast, "American Supermodel Contest" and "Proud of the Sky Bridge" have become topics talked about among many young women. When everyone is discussing that a contestant from the "American Supermodel Contest" is unfortunately eliminated, and when the best friend is chatting about a stunning outfit in "Proud of the Sky Bridge". Because there is no signal from lietime TV in all the packages of the cable TV operator at home, you can't just say a word, that embarrassing situation can be imagined.

American operators also have a regional monopoly. In order to avoid unnecessary competition, operators such as Comcast, remote communication, and Time Warner have tacitly divided their respective territory. In some relatively remote areas, residents often have to choose one operator to access cable TV signals.

If you encounter this situation unfortunately, you will naturally think you are unlucky. But in New York and Los Angeles, these metropolises are basically a place where major operators will compete for in-depth land, so this potential monopoly situation does not exist.

So, those users who could not find the lietime TV signal in the Time Warner cable package turned to Comcast and remote communication operators in order to receive the "American Supermodel Contest" and "Proud of the Skybridge".

In October, when Time Warner's cable TV department counted the number of users again, it was shocked to find that in just one month, Time Warner's number of users quickly lost 460,000.

What is this number?

Time Warner's total cable TV users are only 15 million. After 800,000 lietime TV users were cut, the remaining lietime TV users were only 3 million, which was the lowest among several major operators. The root cause of all this is of course because of the competitive relationship between Time Warner and Firefly.

But at this time, 460,000 users were lost in one month, which was equivalent to 3% of the total number of Time Warner cable TV users. This was only one month. You should know that in 1994, Time Warner's number of users increased by 1.6 million. Moreover, if this situation continues, Time Warner's cable TV business this year will not only not grow, but will return to the level of two or even three years ago at one time.

Terry Semer, who was struggling to get lost again in the summer film business, heard the news and shouted the head of Time Warner's cable department and scolded him. Time Warner originally wanted to deal with this matter silently, but for some reason, the news was suddenly spread.

For a time, news about the "Time Warner cable business declined sharply" flooded the media. Although everyone knew what was going on, Time Warner completely wanted to suppress the development of lietime TV, but because of the strong rise of "American Supermodel Contest" and "Proud of the Skybridge", it eventually failed to lose money.

3% of users lost in one month, how much will they lose in that year?

Many people couldn't help asking, and there were undoubtedly many people in Time Warner shareholders who had this idea, so the management once again received pressure from all sides.

In order to calm this matter, someone must come out to take responsibility.

Time Warner's internal forces are mixed. A cable TV department is entrenched in several parties. Everyone knows the ins and outs of this matter. In fact, if there is a change to a company, they will basically do this if they encounter such a situation. Therefore, this time, Fengbo cannot be considered a business mistake. Terry Semer cannot provoke internal disputes under external pressure. In the end, he can only kill his teeth and swallow his own spokesperson in the cable TV department as a scapegoat.

In just a few days, Time Warner announced that a vice president of the original cable TV department was about to leave due to a decision-making mistake, which gave an explanation to all parties.

But of course this matter cannot end like this.

The popularity of lietime TV is still rising rapidly. Time Warner has lost 460,000 users. If the signal from lietime TV is not reconnected as soon as possible and the situation will continue to develop, the situation will definitely be even worse.

Having hurriedly handled the pressure on the outside world and shareholders, Terry Semer personally called Kasenberg.

The phone was transferred to Carsonberg's secretary's office, and the reply he received seemed to be unsurprising: "Mr. Carsonberg is not here...I'm not sure when will he be able to contact him?"

After several tests failed, Terry Semer had to call Robert Eiger, who had just become the helm of the Firefly TV business.

Robert Eiger's attitude was very enthusiastic, but he said that because AE TV is a joint venture with Hearst Group, he is not easy to interfere in Lietime TV's affairs.

Once again, he called Anne Sweeney, president of AE TV.

Anne Sweeney was even more direct: "I'm sorry, Mr. Semer, the decision-making power for this matter is no longer in my hands."

In the office of Time Warner headquarters in Manhattan, he was rejected three times in a row, and Terry Semer almost threw the phone out directly.

Looking at the gray sky outside the office glass window and taking several deep breaths in a row, Terry Semer calmed down.

Terry Semer certainly understood that this was the Firefly's counterattack against Time Warner's original decision, and he wanted to deliberately let Time Warner go for a few months.

However, Time Warner definitely can't wait for the current situation.

If Time Warner's cable users drop by hundreds of thousands next month, his eO may be involved in this matter.

Frowning and thinking for a long time, just as Terry Semer was considering whether to fly to Los Angeles to interview Carsonberg in person, he suddenly remembered that it seemed that the young man behind the fireflies should be in East Hampton now.

Although I have never visited Eric's residence, it is not difficult to find out. After a few phone calls, I quickly got the address of Eric's manor in East Hampton.

After thinking for a moment, Terry Semer ordered the secretary to prepare the car, and he planned to rush to East Hampton himself.

After all, as the absolute controller of the Firefly Group, if you can directly get Eric Williams' promise, it will definitely be far more entangled with senior executives such as Carsonberg.
Chapter completed!