San Francisco, 1:09 PM
Tue Dec 1
30 posts in the last 24 hours
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To this day I am certain that shows like Pushing Daisies would still be around if the industry didn't base all of their statistics on the flawed Nielsen method. I'm positive that if they had a more accurate way of tracking (Maybe Nielsen+Tivo+Hulu, with a glance at the crazy BitTorrent numbers), better shows might stay on the air.
I sometimes wonder if you have to have an average IQ under 70 to be a Nielsen home. I was approached to be a Nielsen person and then denied. Musta been too brainy.
@superberg: Except the industry execs don't really care about fanbase. They care about ad revenue. DVRs and BitTorrent don't help that. Hulu might (not sure how revenue sharing between the site, studio, network etc works), but anyway only airs ~2min/hr of ads vs ~15 for TV. It's possible that Neilsen, incomplete though it is, still may offer the better insight into what studio execs actually want to know.
@superberg: But don't get your hopes too high about that, just see Heroes (I think it's still the most downloaded show, even more than Lost, and even its publicity is designed for downloaders to watch it (more blatant, awful placement, that awful Nissan)
@VisibleHand: The studios are just saying "if I don't earn money with downloads, I'll close all the download sites", which is dumb, because they should be thinking "There's a channel I can piggyback to get my ads to millions of people without spending anything in infrastructure, if I think a bit about how to do it".
Yes, Nielsen measures how they earn money, because they're stupid and are not trying to earn money in any way Nielsen doesn't measure (except for Heroes)
@Dirk Anger: I agree. There's product placements, DVD/electronic sales, and various other revenue channels as well.
I was simply making the broad point that most execs wouldn't use "number of happy fans" as their only metric even if they had that number. They're not interested in happiness, they're interested in squeezing that happiness until dollars come out. Some squeeze the old-fashioned way, and some have found out how to turn the internet into a 21st-century juicing machine. But an exec who can't figure out how to turn a fan's happiness into money doesn't care about the fan.
@VisibleHand: I agree, but I don't think the exec needs to sincerely care about wether or not fans are happy, I would settle with him understanding that a very happy fan will buy mugs, t-shirts, caps, go to the website and swallow a ton of ads to see the last 1-minute crap they produce about their show and may buy the stuff the protagonists use and wear, and that all of that can produce a lot of money, if he just takes his head out of his ass and figure out how to measure all of this
@superberg:
For which? S2 or LAD? Frankly, I thought that S2 flowed better than S1. Daisy was actually human, we got some really cool glimpses into how the rules worked, and the church scene is the most powerful scene in the entire series.
Now, the movie, on the other hand, had...problems. Neo-Daisy just sucked, no two ways about it. The idea that George would be allowed to reveal herself to her family without consequences is almost impossible to reconcile with what we saw happen the first time she tried it. And what with George taking over for Rube and her family moving away, they pretty much guaranteed that any new series that they might be able to pull off from this won't feel like it's part of the original series at all.
Perhaps the best thing about her winning Best Supporting Actress is that it means they didn't totally smeg up who they gave _every_ primetime Emmy to...
@Purple Dave: i'd have to vote against this myself. launching it from a cannon would help the people being hit, sure, but the people firing said cannon would miss out on the tactile pleasure of beating a stupid person over the head with a brick tied to a 2x4.
@Dr Emilio Lizardo: How do we educate the stupid public to stop giving a tinker's dam about these self-aggrandizing hollywood we-love-ourselves fests called awards ceremonies? When was the last time you saw millions of dollars being spent to honor the real heroes of society, firefighters, teachers, and law enforcement officers?
@micah1_8: people take everything for granted, and just don't care. However, i really enjoy entertainment escapism myself, so i do enjoy promotion of the arts, but i never tune in to these meaningless award shows(see mtv crapfest award show), except some bits from the oscars, but yea, it did seem weird, for example, how m.jackson dies everybody goes crazy, but when a soldier in iraq dies defending our very way of life, nobody cares.
@TheGreenRanger:
My dad commented on how they had Farrah Fawcett's "life story" film just about completed (it was just a waiting game towards the end, apparently), and if they hadn't been able to run that before Jackson died, it wouldn't have aired for at least another month. Personally, I think it's just the result of everyone guilting on how they spent the last decade making fun of him for being a complete and total whackjob.
So are they ever going to make a movie version of Wicked for her to star in? I just saw the musical with my wife a few weeks ago, and it seems like you could have a lot of Back to the Future 2/Tribbles and Tribulations style fun with the action weaving in and out of the familiar scenes from the Wizard of Oz.
What are they waiting for? Hairspray's already gone from musical-based-on-a-movie to a movie-based-on-a-musical-based-on-a-movie.
I loved John Hodgman's comment for her which included,"She says if she wasn't an actress she would like to be a private detective which sounds like a good idea for a TV show!"
I love it when they make digs at the networks for canceling shows that go on to win multiple awards.
@Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.: Whatever t.v. show comes out of this will actually be a lot like Heroes, except instead of super powers, every character will be equipped with deep psychological flaws and quirky stupidity.
09/22/09
I sometimes wonder if you have to have an average IQ under 70 to be a Nielsen home. I was approached to be a Nielsen person and then denied. Musta been too brainy.
09/22/09
09/22/09
09/22/09
Yes, Nielsen measures how they earn money, because they're stupid and are not trying to earn money in any way Nielsen doesn't measure (except for Heroes)
09/22/09
I was simply making the broad point that most execs wouldn't use "number of happy fans" as their only metric even if they had that number. They're not interested in happiness, they're interested in squeezing that happiness until dollars come out. Some squeeze the old-fashioned way, and some have found out how to turn the internet into a 21st-century juicing machine. But an exec who can't figure out how to turn a fan's happiness into money doesn't care about the fan.
09/22/09
Honestly, if they put up their own, well-seeded torrents(with ads!), I'd use them in a heartbeat.
I don't understand why it's "airwaves or it didn't happen" with these nincompoops.
09/23/09
09/22/09
09/22/09
09/22/09
09/23/09
For which? S2 or LAD? Frankly, I thought that S2 flowed better than S1. Daisy was actually human, we got some really cool glimpses into how the rules worked, and the church scene is the most powerful scene in the entire series.
Now, the movie, on the other hand, had...problems. Neo-Daisy just sucked, no two ways about it. The idea that George would be allowed to reveal herself to her family without consequences is almost impossible to reconcile with what we saw happen the first time she tried it. And what with George taking over for Rube and her family moving away, they pretty much guaranteed that any new series that they might be able to pull off from this won't feel like it's part of the original series at all.
09/22/09
09/21/09
09/21/09
I'ma have to vote for a brick tied to a 2x4 launched from a cannon.
09/22/09
09/22/09
/signed
09/22/09
09/22/09
09/22/09
09/23/09
My dad commented on how they had Farrah Fawcett's "life story" film just about completed (it was just a waiting game towards the end, apparently), and if they hadn't been able to run that before Jackson died, it wouldn't have aired for at least another month. Personally, I think it's just the result of everyone guilting on how they spent the last decade making fun of him for being a complete and total whackjob.
09/21/09
What are they waiting for? Hairspray's already gone from musical-based-on-a-movie to a movie-based-on-a-musical-based-on-a-movie.
09/21/09
09/21/09
I love it when they make digs at the networks for canceling shows that go on to win multiple awards.
09/22/09
Also her appeal for work... it was funny because it was so true!
09/21/09
09/21/09
09/21/09
09/21/09