BREAKING: Tired, Bored Oscar Viewers Turn Off Teevees Early

Because ABC told Nielsen that the official end -- for ratings purposes -- of Sunday nite's Oscar telecast would be 11:59 PM, the Nielsen "average" numbers released on Monday do not reflect the real ratings of the ceremony. It is widely-known in the biz that lots of viewers turn off the show if it runs past midnite, which Sunday's ran-til-12:22AM-snoozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzathon did. Including that lower-rated period would have lowered the broadcast's "average" ratings number.

I would assume that the networks pay Nielsen for something-like-reel-real-time-numbers, and knew from past experience that this would be the case. I would also assume that the decision to cut off the measurement at midnite was a desparate attempt to keep the average ratings from sinking below the average ratings for the AI6 season premiere, which would have been a disaster for ABC:

Oscars, 25 February 2007: 39.9 million
American Idol, 16 January 2007: 37.4 million

*****

Bonus: Sunday's Oscar telecast was the third-longest ever, behind only 2000 [12:41 AM finish] and 2002 [12:34 AM finish].

39.9 Mil, but Who's Counting? [washingtonpost.com -- first item]