Chapter 157
On Wednesday, the quickly produced new issue of the «Sophia Talk show» was officially aired on CBS. The original guest of this issue was a famous rugby player. Many rugby fans sat in front of the TV and waited for the idol to appear. When it was discovered that the guest was replaced by the young director Eric Williams, some hardcore fans called the TV station and questioned them.
But most TV viewers are not so picky, and they were pleasantly surprised. After all, Eric's current influence was not comparable to a rugby player.
"Wow, I can't help but think of the gun battle. It was so cool."
......
"Eric Williams's jokes are really funny. The robbers are playing poker with SWAT members, haha..."
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"Drew Barrymore has never been seen, since the «17 Again», the media has not even had her news recently."
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"Eric is really scary when he is angry, he doesn't look like the same person at all.”
“It’s not surprising as he's so young, and he wants his older employees to be obedient , he’s not guilty.”
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Such talk appeared in front of the TV sets in tens of thousands of households, the proportion of teenagers in front of the TV had increased greatly due to it being summer holiday, and Eric’s influence among teenagers is estimated to be higher than that of ordinary idol stars. After all, as peers, if they were within 100 metres, it might cause all kinds of envy and hatred, but as their distance exceeded 10,000 meters, what he mostly received was worship. Therefore, many young people saw Eric's rare presence on the TV set, and they couldn't help but share their starstruck emotions by calling their classmates to remind them to watch the show.
The influence of «Sophia Talk show» was far from being comparable to the «Oprah Talk show», which has only been around for a few years, but already had an average of more than 11 million viewers per episode, and had an upwards trend. The «Sophia Talk show» had an average rating of only about 4 million.
At the beginning of the program, the viewing data was at only 4.2 million, but as the program was broadcast, the viewing curve soared. After the 40-minute program was broadcast, the number of viewers stopped at 7.5 million , almost double. After the program was completed, the phone hotline of CBS TV was blasted.
"If you promoted it one week in advance, the program's ratings would have definitely exceeded 10 million." After seeing the ratings statistics, a senior executive of CBS said with some regrets.
More than 70% of the audience's hotline calls were expecting the show to be replayed as soon as possible, while other chaotic reasons accounted for the 30%. Some hope that the《Running Out of Time》crew could go on the show together, and some people hope to see Drew and Eric appear on screen together, and a large number of people asked if the video tapes in Eric's hands would be released to the market.
CBS organized the feedback from the audience into a document and transferred it to Colombia and Firefly Studios. At the same time, it also responded to the public opinion by sending an invitation to Eric, Drew and《Running Out of Time》. Colombia Corporation was very moved, after all, this could be good propaganda for the film, but this was rejected by Eric and others.
If it weren't for clarifying the rumors, Eric would never have appeared on the talk show, Eric refused, and Drew would definitely not go.
The agents of Cruise and Hanks also felt that the influence of this program was a little small and did not match the identity level of the two superstars. However, Brooke Shields was somewhat moved, as《Running Out of Time》brought her very good turning point in her carrier, but CBS, which was rejected by Eric and the two Toms, was not interested. The other big stars were not on, and whilst Brook was invited she had little hype. After all, Brooke Shields only played in the《Running Out of Time》for a few minutes, so although the influence of the «Sophia Talk show» was far less than the «Oprah Show», CBS was still a national TV station, and they were not yet at the point of needing to take whatever they were given.
Although the invitation was rejected, CBS quickly came up with a way to maximize the benefits. When Eric participated in the recording of the program they accumulated more than two hours of material, whilst the talk show was only forty minutes long.
As a result, CBS re-edited the two hours of material into a first and second episode, which were played during the next two days, because of the short-term publicity advertising that night, the next day the audience ratings of the re-edited episode reached 9 million, and when the last episode was played on Friday, the ratings directly rose by tens of thousands of people, and even reached 12 million at the peak.
A daytime program that has a rating of 10 million, can be treated by the ace program. The «Oprah Talk Show» was the result of more than 20 years of glorious build up. READ FOR FREE AT FIZZHAZ TRANSLATES - WHO ACTUALLY TRANSLATES THIS (ALBIET BADLY!)
In order to capitalise on the the results, CBS directly gave up on several programs that had already been produced, and spent a lot of money to invite other more famous guests to try to create a talk show that rivals «Oprah Show». But in the end, they can only be disappointed. As Eric first judged, the biggest problem with this program was the host Sophia Temple. It was not that the she was good enough, but that character of Sophia Temple was not suitable for hosting talk shows. TN: ???
Therefore, after the second week, the ratings of this talk show experienced a magically high peak. Although as audience was changed, the ratings slowly fell. In the end, CBS could only give up the effort. The episodes of the show Eric participated in became an insurmountable peak of the talk show until the show was axed by CBS. Sophia Temple moved from one show to the next but the ratings never reached that level.
Naturally, these were all things that would be talked about later. The storm caused by the 'ringer' question for《Running Out of Time》disappeared quickly after the CBS talk show. After all, after the talk show was aired, especially the two re-edited episodes, in which show had more than 20 minutes of video, from where Eric was at the scene, with the actors, that detailed the shooting process. All affairs big and smaller were place in front of the audience, and the big scenes such as blockades that appeared from time to time also shoed everyone that there was no possibility of forgery on the videotape, so the question was now purely a test of the IQ of the audience.
As for George Northern, after the «Sophia Talk show» was broadcast, he had not come out again because Columbia Pictures had directly pressured 《Premiere》 magazine and forced them to fire him, after all, George Northern's article almost caused an incalculable loss for Colombia. If Colombia did nothing, they would appear too easy to bully.
Although other major film companies secretly applauded George Northern's article attacking Colombia, they did not want it to be their turn in the future, so George Northern was blacklisted as a film critic by the six major film studios.