David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
... or, in other words, ratings news.
Viewers in the land of Television are not making it any easier for your Mayor to protect them from game shows aimed at subliterates. NBC's Friday combo of "Deal or No Deal" and its latest moronorama, "1 Vs. 100" led it to a win on the evening. Let's imagine, briefly, that you're NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly. Let's say you worked really hard and spent scads of money to develop slick, quality programming like "Kidnapped," "Friday Night Lights" and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." Let's say you look at the overnights and see "1 Vs. 100" easily surpassed all of those shows in the ratings. Question: How much of your hair do you tear out?
Meanwhile, on Sunday, ABC's ratings press release was very circumspect in the details it parsed out. For example, ABC was very proud of the fact that "Desperate Housewives" had 20 million viewers, On the other hand, it neglected to mention just how many viewers its following show, "Brothers & Sisters," lured, mentioning only it won in certain demographic areas such as women 18-34. (To be fair, it was also No. 1 in the 18-49 demographic: It boasted that it was 14% ahead of CBS, while CBS, in its own press release, noted that "Without a Trace" -- which actually had more viewers than "B&S" with nearly 14m -- was .2 of a ratings point behind ABC in viewers aged 18-49.)
So ABC makes it sound like they thumped CBS, while CBS makes ABC's win seem negligible, and ABC thoughtfully neglected to mention that "B&S" hemmorhaged viewers from its "Desperate" lead-in. And I wonder why you people hate ratings numbers so much. For what it's worth, CBS won the night handily thanks to a football overrun.
Comments
I am fed up with you, Mr. Mayor! Must we riot in order to get you to STOP with these ratings reports?
Why, WHY, do you subject us to this trivial crap? Do you view us as TV automatons who will follow whatever ratings are the highest? Give us more credit, Mr. Mayor. I, for one, do not follow the herd.
I would sooner gak up a hairball than watch Bob Saget or "Deal or No Deal."
Posted by: A Concerned Citizen | October 16, 2006 3:53 PM
Hey, wait a minute! Who's that guy pretending to be me? This is some kind of Nixonian dirty trick, a filthy October surprise of the most cynical kind and EXACTLY the sort of thing we've come to expect from this administration. Saget rules.
Posted by: A concerned citizen | October 16, 2006 10:23 PM