I’m always looking for this link to the map of who in this country says “pop” and who says “soda.”  Nice to be back where people say pop like you’re supposed to!

Okay, so the topic of today’s rant is….the Neilson ratings.  I bet you didn’t expect me to say that!  Okay, so this has really been bothering me lately.  I understand how the system evolved in the first place.  Originally they sent out like paper surveys to people asking what they watched.  Obviously this was a huge pain (and expensive) so they could only do it a few times per year.  Consequently, the networks were inclined to roll out special programming when they knew this special “grading” was going on.  In the modern age, this concept has evolved to the point of having two “mini-seasons” (ala LOST) where you actually have a “fall finale” before taking a break until the next sweeps period.

But explain to me how this outdated system is still relevant?  Now with technology like digital cable boxes and TiVo, as well as the ease of Internet and phone surveys, ratings are tracked every day of the week.  Also, with the lazification (that’s right, I just coined the phrase lazification) of America, off-peak times (such as summer or Christmas) don’t have as few viewers relatively as they once had.  This is increasingly true now that I can TiVo things and save them for when I don’t want to be doing something else.  So basically, there is no reason to only show special programming during sweeps.

Now I’m no network programming specialist, so there must be something more to it that I’m not understanding.  Surely there is some aspiring young network exec that realizes if they play a show straight through and all the other networks go on vacation for 2 months, they will basically be the only game in town garnering them huge ratings.  I would assume this would also translate into larger viewer ship for sweeps since you will have hooked viewers when there was nothing else on and now they will continue to watch even when there are other choices.  At the very least, you think they would choose to show new programming rather than repeats (some people actually do this, particularly on cable) choosing to debut new shows between sweeps periods so there will be less competition for the viewing audience.  But why doesn’t everybody do this?  It seems to me that the most effective way to program a time slot would be six months of new episodes of one show followed by six months of new episodes of another show.

I understand that originally there may have been a dearth of ideas for shows or quality stars and writers to have that many new shows, forcing networks to limit the number of shows.  Now with the number of people trying to get on T.V., I doubt this is much of a problem.  In fact, it might be helpful to give more shows a chance instead of infinitely reproducing the same show endlessly.  (Side note:  Part of this would be maybe not canceling shows immediately and maybe giving them some time to develop into good shows…it’s a chicken or the egg type of problem but is this rapid cycling of T.V. shows caused by Americans’ attention-deficit-i-want-an-oompa-loompa-now-daddy attitude or is it helping to cause Americans’ attention-deficit-i-want-an-oompa-loompa-now-daddy attitude?  And if shows knew they had a long term commitment by a network with less pressure for immediate results, what might storylines be like?)  Especially with the improved technology these days for quick turn-around time and the amount of money you are talking about for a big time show, it would be pretty easy to film well in advance of the episodes you are showing allowing the staff plenty of time for vacation and recuperation.  In that case why not have year long seasons?  Don’t soap operas already do this?

Anyway, all of this ranting is for naught since it is clear that we are on the cusp of a total revolution of the system.  Its pretty obvious at this point that we are quickly moving to a time when technology makes it easy for any independent to have movie quality equipment and editing studios which create entries for some On Demand data base where calculating viewer ship is automatic based on number of downloads.  And I, for one, welcome our new Comcast overlords!