The Weekend Effect in Television Viewership and Prime-Time Scheduling.

The observed drops in the ratings of television programs on Fridays and Saturdays are likely a result of two factors: intrinsic contraction in demand for television watching and endogenous scheduling. I decompose the observed weekend effect into the effects from these two factors. To this end, I estimate a viewer choice model that uses aggregate Nielsen ratings data for prime-time network television shows over 11 years. The long span of the data enables me to control for television series qualities. The estimation results reveal that the estimated weekend effect is dampened as the empirical model accounts for variation in the program quality compositions. The counterfactual analysis that is based on the estimates of the preferred specification indicates that endogenous scheduling accounts for two-thirds of the rating drops on weekends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]