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Maxim gets minimum affil clearances

Jun 23, 2003  •  Post A Comment

Maxim magazine’s “Hot 100” special June 21 delivered lots of scantily clad girls and sexy images, but not everybody got to see it. In the end only 182 of the 227 NBC affiliates carried the show, which reached only 80 percent of the country’s TV homes. It ranked as the lowest clearance rate of any of the 109 programs on any of the six broadcast networks that week, according to Nielsen Media Research. A number of affiliates were also unhappy that NBC would sell an hour of prime time, but several affiliate sources said they were confident that the odds were against the net’s trying another Maxim-style deal. “We will evaluate on a show by show basis,” an NBC spokeswoman said. “It has not been a large part of our strategy in the past. We will do it when it makes fiscal sense.” The “Hot 100” came in fourth out of four shows in its time period, attracting no more than a 4 share of the audience, while the most-watched show at that hour, Fox’s “America’s Most Wanted,” attracted more than an 8 share. The mag did its best in its target demos. The 2.605 million viewers included 841,000 men between the ages of 18 and 49 and 334,000 men 50 and older. The data indicates that 20 percent of the audience was 17 or younger (330,000 teens and 194,000 in the 2 to 11demo). The remaining 35 percent of the audience was female (583,000 women 18 to 49 and 322,000 women 50 and older). Maybe they were watching to see the latest in lingerie.