People who talk about TV (like Nyanko) talk about Nielsen Ratings a lot, but to some people it is not immediately obvious what these ratings are or why they should care. I've started to realize that they are most important to me in the early days of a new show just because the ratings on the first few episodes will essentially decide the fate of the show and I've got too much stuff to watch to invest in a show that will only last 4 episodes.
thefutoncritic has daily ratings and analysis, and here is their report for yesterday, Wed 9/26 which was notable for being the series premieres of Private Practice and Dirty Sexy Money on ABC and Bionic Woman and Life on NBC. The basic conclusion here is that both Private Practice and Bionic Woman did well, and people were probably flipping back and forth. I have not seen Private Practice at all (other than the half-test episode on Grey's last season), but the pilot for Bionic Woman was not so great. Sometimes I thought that she really was a robot.
Reports from the first two days of the week imply that Chuck is struggling a little bit, but not as much as Journeyman, which is probably not going to last. Reaper should be okay though, so I think I'll stick with those two shows on the top on my list of new shows to watch this season.
Comment from Nyanko: The other way to look at this though, is that if there's a show you enjoy, you should really try to watch it/download it/somehow juke the ratings numbers so that the networks will feel that it has enough of an audience to continue to air it.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Ratings and stuff
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2 comments:
My comment on the comment from Nyanko: I thought about saying something like that, but my opinion is that a single person and their friends is just not going to do enough to change a network's conception of how much money a show can bring in through advertising. Grass(net)roots type activities can work but they have to be on a much larger scale, and I don't know if any of us are crazy enough to start online petitions and donation drives or stuff like that.
I certainly hope none of us are crazy enough to start online petitions or buying flats of candy to mail to networks. Please, stage an intervention if I get to that point. But I feel like enough people get motivated to watch early, rather than doing the wait and see attitude (which I can completely understand - my Tivo overfloweth), it might help some decent shows make it through at least one season so they can find their legs. The Nielsens are statistically representative, so somehow you are represented in those numbers.
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