Dead Men Do Tell Tales (And Interesting One's Too!)

I was cruising Yahoo in hopes of finding some quality numbers to crunch for my blog post this week when I ran across an interesting news story.  Apparently NBC is looking to replace Jay Leno as host of the Tonight Show in favor of Late Night Host Jimmy Fallon.  I found this interesting because I can pretty vividly remember the huge battle which ensued Leno’s removal from his spot as The Tonight Show host four years ago when NBC replaced him with Conan O’Brian.  When I first read the article I had a “here we go again” type thought; however, upon further examination I saw that they were basing their decision to replace Leno on the basis of a survey measurement technique called a Q score.  Apparently when NBC made the decision to replace Leno back in 2009 his positive Q score was 21 and his negative was 26 whereas O’Brian’s positive and negative scores lay at 13 and 38 respectively.  This time around Leno’s positive is 12 whereas his negative is 24 and Fallon’s scores are positive 10 and negative 27.  If we were to evaluate the difference between 2009 and 2013 for Leno there is a 9 point positive difference and two point negative difference.  Both scores have dropped which according to Marketing Evaluations Inc. is bad in that Leno’s overall popularity has gone down considerably; however, his negative image has also decreased (the article in Forbes cites that in the peak of his battle with O’Brian  his negative was as high as 38).  The difference between O’Brian and Fallon is a drop in positive of three points and an eleven point drop in negative perception.   

                When I pursued the meaning of the Q test on Marketing Evaluations website I was allowed to view quite a few different sales pitches for the company’s different product lines; however, nowhere on the site did it inform me exactly what the survey entailed.  I found it very interesting that although Marketing Evaluations Inc. would be willing to tell me how Howard Zinn or Martin Luther King would sell their product they wouldn’t be willing to let me see how their product measured what it measured.  It would seem that after our discussions in class about survey transparency in order to measure efficacy of measurement that this company is not operating within the standards of survey policies; however, it is possible that this is because their subject matter borders on the vacuous.