This past few days have been full of media attention to the scandal around NBC’s timetable changes, insults to talk show hosts and a very personal involvement of all the main players here (NBC executives, Jay Leno and Conan O’brien). It is interesting to check out the search trends and volumes for the names of the involved, as the previous post demonstrated Jimmy Kimmel’s appearnace on Jay Leno’s show got the Jimmy Kimmel show a nice wave of interested searches. Right now it looks like anyone who wants to have some media attnetion should tie themselves to this story, its one that people like to follow.
So comparing Conan to Leno, here is what we can see -
The first thing you can easily spot is that both get more attention starting January 3rd, and that Leno gets much more in search volume compared to Conan, even when the interest in Conan grows the same thing happens to Leno’s search. Next take a look at the actual search terms for both hosts – starting with Conan
And Leno
It looks like Leno is just winning all the catogories here, notice how the prime search for Leno is for his show, while for Conan is for his conflict with Leno. The exposure that Leno gets is more than double what Conan gets, and the assumption in this case is that just more people know Leno’s name, they respond to it, and they are spread over most of the country, while Conan is more liked and known in the edges of the country, and also is directly linked to Leno. So maybe the executives in NBC know something about their audiance and are willing to take this bullet to the leg (or head) and go ahead with this move, since it looks like Leno is still very popular and makes more people interested.
Personally I will keep watching Letterman, and will probably check out Conan… whenever he is back on his feet.
