Flop

NBC released viewing figures for the Live Earth concert coverage it carried over the weekend. To call the figure dismal would be to an understatement. Almost twice as many viewers watched a re-run episode of "Cops" on Fox. In total the goregasm got about 2.8 million viewers. Some 12.3 million watched reruns.

The three-hour prime-time telecast of the event, designed to raise awareness of climate-change issues, drew just 2.8 million viewers to the network. It was the least watched show among the major broadcast networks Saturday night, trailing repeats of Fox's "Cops," which averaged 4.2 million, and "America's Most Wanted" (4.7 million), and ABC's broadcast of the 2001 movie "Monsters, Inc." (3.4 million).

NBC's telecast included live coverage of musical acts at New Jersey's Giants Stadium as well as taped bits from concerts around the globe.

But the news was not all bad for "Live Earth" organizer Al Gore, according to ratings spinmeisters at NBC Universal: 19 million people watched at least six minutes of the concerts that aired throughout the day on its networks NBC, Bravo, CNBC and Telemundo. (Nielsen does not measure ratings for Sundance Channel, which also televised the concert.)

Spinmeister is also an understatement. When a network is touting viewers on other networks as a sign things were not so bad, they were worse than bad.  Real indicator of the disaster: Gore stories have virtually disappeared form the media in the past couple of days, unless they point out the flaccid response Gore got. Nary a hint of a "draft Gore" political story.