Familiarity breeds . . . big ratings and big box office.
Nielsen, the nation’s top arbiter of what the nation sees and does, yesterday released its lists of consumer “favorites,” proving that if Americans like something, they’ll buy it in all its variations – over and over again.
Take TV. Fox’s addictive hit, “American Idol,” captured the top two spots on the list of favorite television programs over the past year, with a staggering 34 percent of American households glued to the tube Tuesday and Wednesday nights to pass judgment on the singing merits of the terrible and the talented.
” ‘American Idol’ has completely changed the playing field of television,” said Brian Lowry, a media pundit at Variety magazine. “There used to be two television seasons, the fall and the summer. Now there are three seasons: there’s fall, the ‘American Idol’ season, and the summer.”
“Dancing With The Stars” captured two spots as well – Nos. 3 and 4 – with NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” at No. 5.
“The trend out there is, if people like something, you give them as much of it as you can,” said Lowry. “If they like ‘CSI,’ you give them ‘CSI’ three times a week.”
That trend holds true in Americans’ movie tastes for the past year.
Of the Top 10 movies in 2007, all but one – box-office smash “Transformers” – were sequels.
“Sequels are the story of the year,” said Lowry. “The problem with sequels is while they are reliable, they are pretty expensive to make, so there will probably be an effort to make new brands next year.”
“Spider-Man 3” and “Shrek the Third” captured the top two spots on 2007’s movies list, each bringing in about $330 million in ticket sales.
In music, “High School Musical 2” earned the top grade for album sales. And another Disney musical soundtrack, “Hannah Montana 2,” took the fourth spot.
But album sales are not the only judge of music.
T-Pain’s “Buy U A Drank” was the No. 1 song played on the radio (365,000 times) and the most downloaded ring tone for cellphones.
The most downloaded song using programs like Apple’s iTunes was “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” by Soulja Boy Tell’em.
Nielsen even broke down what cities download the most music. They’re talking about you, Austin, Salt Lake City and San Diego.
Another geographical measurement shows what cities do the most text-messaging. There was a three-way tie for first place in that techie-geek category, with 38 percent of the people in Houston, Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C., texting the most compulsively in 2007.
Residents of Salt Lake City, Utah, like movies more than any other city in the country, Nielsen reports. About 73 percent of adults there bought DVDs this year – 8 percent more than Colorado Springs, Colo., which came in at No. 2.
Salt Lakers also went to the movies more than the rest of the country. About 16 percent of adults there went to picture shows at least once a month. Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., were close behind, with 14 percent each.
The more-the-better trend even holds true for American bookworms, Nielsen found. The top two pieces of adult fiction this year were by the same author: “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and “The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini.
The average American spent 42.2 minutes playing the top video-game console this year, PlayStation 2.
That’s way more than the Nos. 2 and 3, Xbox and Xbox 360, which occupied Americans for about 13 minutes apiece.