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Opinion: Live Earth dead

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The good news for Al Gore is that his Live Earth concert highlights show on NBC, designed to raise public awareness about global warming, attracted some 19 million viewers at one point or another Saturday night, according to Nielsen ratings released late yesterday.

The bad news is that more than 16 million of those folks switched away from the three-hour concert that consumed the network’s prime time Saturday evening. Many, perhaps disappointed that Gore did not announce his candidacy for president, were no doubt out back gathered around smoking grills helping to further warm the earth’s atmosphere.

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This left NBC with about 2.7 million viewers to earn fourth place for the night behind ABC with 3.4 million, Fox with 4.6 million and CBS with 5.2 million. Times columnist Jonah Goldberg has a different take on the concert here.

In Britain, the BBC reported 3.1 million watched the show, which was less than a third of the 11.4 million audience for the Princess Diana concert two weeks ago. Of those 3.1 million, 123 rang up the BBC to complain about foul language during the concert. Madonna, among others, felt compelled to use the mf word.

Perhaps what we really need next is a live global concert to raise awareness about the omnipresence of live global concerts trying to raise awarenesses.

--Andrew Malcolm

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