TV Over

The season is over. The lost finale was ok (actually better than most of the season), Medium was ok, Ghost Whisper ok. Heroes was disappointing.

Fans are up in arms to get Jericho back on. I myself have never watched it. I agree with comments on Screen Rant about how fans would react if American Idol went on a four month hiatus in the middle of the show. I think the effort has as much chance as reviving Enterprise, especially since some of the same names are involved. But to not try at all guarantees failure. It's not a ratings gatherer, and to the network types, that's where the money is.

There is the inevitable criticism of the ratings system, known as Nielsons. I did a little digging on this. Nielson Media Research acknowledges the technical challenges and has some interesting solutions. They encode audio signals in the broadcast so that the box can tell what you are watching when (assuming you are one of the sampling families). So even if the show is taped or DVR'ed, the box records that you did watch it. That leads me to wonder how much of a stats blip would occur if you recorded shows and watched at 1 AM.

There are advantages to not being top rated show. April and Rachel watch American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Without commercial skip, April would go crazy. Dancing with the Stars is really bad, it seems to go "one of these couples will be eliminated, commercials, recap, narrow the selection, commercial, recap, narrow more, commercial, recap, ...". They need to fill an hour, but most of it is repeats the last show. So lower rated shows actually have more content that the higher ones.

End of Entry