mel:
320 Replies! WTH Robert — more people post her about Dollhouse than are watching it!

maybe it means these shows tscc and DH have more viewers than indicated by neilsen?

Unlike others I won’t play in universalist statements. Instead I inend to speak in subjective tones: I like Dollhouse very much and have from the get go. I don’t like 24 (to much repetitiion). I don’t like Fringe (Abrams is the most overrated “auteur” which is quite an accomplishment for a nation that produces, for the most part,juvenile media mediocrities). I think Bones is an OK mediocrity. I don’t particularly like Terminator and hope Summer Glau ends up on Dollhouse if the latter survives.

As to the prophetic utterances I will just note that in the US longevity is determined in the final analysis by popularity rather than on the basis of quality (presumably in such a environment Ulysses would never get published). Caveat: only time will tell whether Dollhouse will be cancelled.

So they really wouldn’t be more accurate at all. We’d have no idea of the age/gender/number of those watching. The data would be useless to advertisers.

All I’m saying is that a relatively small sample can give very accurate models of the wider population. And that 25,000 is not a small sample.

The idea of my television telling someone what channel I’m tuned to is a pretty horrific one. And, of course, all it does is tell the company what channel I’m tuned to – not whether I’m watching, who’s with me, how much attention I’m paying or whatever.

The Nielsen system, as I said, has problems. Every system does. Sci Fi and the people who advertise on it know that they’re under-represented. I’d rather have a system where people know it’s roughly right, that keeps adjusting its model than everyone’s television watching them as they watch television.

‘For advertising purposes only’ … so, say, if a politician wanted to place some political ads, he’d have access to the data? Great.

TV viewing habits can not compare to most polling. There are just far too many variables. The same percentage of Niche Demos does not exist in every normal demo that Nielsen has to go after. If they’re looking for a college educated female between age of 18 and 34 with an income under $60,000 and single that’s fine. However when you start strategically going after groups, you lose the fact that niche demos in viewing aren’t going to get near close to being measured accurately.

SCI FI is a great example. There are certain demos that the percentage is higher for there being a SCI FI fan. Lets call it group X. Group X is more likely to watch SCI FI. Nielsen strategically measures group X in the same “national percentage,” that they’re in. The problem is Nielsen believes this provides statistically valid data. The problem is that SCI is a Nich Demo, and thus harder to accurately measure. So a SCI FI show is more likely to be inaccurately measured. TNS data has shown this in the past (TNS measures about 20 times the people that Nielsen does). The problem is that its only Niche Demos that are inaccurate and thus there aren’t enough people unhappy with Nielsen’s results.

Cable companies and Sat companies should just make it part of their agreement, if you order their service your viewing habits will be measured and shared for advertising purposes only.

Then we’d have more accurate numbers, but less “data,” about the viewers. Combine that with Nielsen and you might have something.

Paranormal Cop Show sounds right. A “science fiction” show with no science… bizarre.

I’m depressed. And I don’t mean because I’ve seen T:SCC recently.

Yeah. It’s basic statistics – as long as you make sure the sample is representative, and you ask the right question, a sample of 1000 Americans will get the same answer as polling every single American to within a couple of percentage points.

Or, to put it another, way – how many people do you think you need?

There’s a great explanation here:

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/sampstat.htm

But you see it with online polls, assuming the polls don’t get crashed – by the time ten people have responded, you can usually see roughly what the result is going to be.

This system IS flawed if that’s the case – !?! So it’s a matter of opinion more than anything….so really there could be 7 or 8 million people watching Sarah and we would never know it!?!

Damn.

This show had a ton of promise when it started. I think a certain someone drove it into the ground.

It’s one of only four shows I bother to watch – TSCC, Leverage, and now Dollhouse being the other three. I may explore some other shows at some point, but these are the only three that stand out for me in terms of concept, characters, and story lines. Everything else is pretty much “been there, done that”.

This week’s TSCC was a disaster. There were some excellent moments, notably the huge knock-down drag-em-fight between Riley and Jesse, resulting in one of the greatly desired moments of the series – the death of Riley. Man, did people hate that broad!

The problem with this week’s episode is precisely what I predicted and also what Summer Glau hinted at during the Q&A at WonderCon last Sunday – Friedman is screwing around with Cameron again! The guy just doesn’t let up with abusing his characters! It’s like he has a sadism streak in him. He’s messed with every character on the show except perhaps Catherine Weaver – probably because he likes Shirley Manson – or knows that he messed with her character, Shirley would have the balls to bitch about it publicly, whereas Summer is too nice and polite to do that.

We can only wait and see how badly he screws around with Summer’s character. It would be insane of him to kill off Cameron, given how massively popular she is. But some people suspect that Friedman knows the show is doomed, despite his disingenuous nonsense about “I know nothing about ratings” which he said on his blog and repeated again at WonderCon last Sunday. And therefore he might very well do that. I doubt it myself, but I can’t trust Friedman any more – he’s screwed up too many times this season.

The writers seem to approach virtually all the topics from a scientific or pseudo scientific POV.

noun.

A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background.

Almost every episode of Fringe deals with some sort of “speculative scientific discoveries or developments” that Walter Bishop (and/or Massive Dynamecs) was involved with.

I’m sure there’s more. The approach they use to get info out of/communicate with dead people is psuedo-science (and certainly fiction, but not paranormal). Genetic engineering? Not paranormal. Teleportation is not paranormal.

I may not be in my right mind, but I honestly think it’s in the science fiction genre, but ALSO in the paranormal genre. But the SciFi channel must not be in its right mind either as it airs paranormal genre stuff. Ghost Hunters International — typically its #1 show of the week for SciFi.

As far as the comments about T:SCC being renewed, I must admit to being surprised, I’d heard the ratings were poor for the first season, and I’m happy to be told otherwise. The first season was pretty good, especially in comparison to S2. It certainly deserved higher ratings than S2.

At the same time, if it wasn’t for T4, I still doubt Fox would have pushed it. By all accounts, they got it for a song.

I think with some promotion that would average a 1.5 (Live+SD) but let’s say it’s not promoted and it winds up with a 1.2 or 1.3 C3, between higher ad revenue, international and DVD sales it needs to average….$1.5 million per original episode MORE than a rerun to be more profitable.

That seems like a pretty steep hill to climb, especially given Dollhouse’s declining ratings.

However, they’ve shown that RFT has much higher advertising brand retention than normal advertising. So it may well continue next season in some form. I know JJ wants to keep it strictly because he’s able to tell more story.

They’re going to need to charge 40% more in premiums for it to be a success, something they’ve been unsuccessful at so far.

Clutz, I’m not predicting a 1.4 for DOLLHOUSE, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I thought it would drop to a 1.5 and level off there. It may well drop to a 1.4. The point is it can drop as long as it trends back up to something healthy. The show needs to keep a 1.8 in C3s to be renewed. I think right now it’s still AVERAGING around a 2.0. So right now it’s doing alright. It must trend back up.

I haven’t changed anything, but getting a 1.4 is BAD. Getting a 1.5 is BAD. 1.6 you can wiggle around and say it’s possibly alright. 1.7 and above and the show is fine. Again, if it can trend up to a 1.8 by seasons end or higher the show WILL be around next season.

Me.

I don’t think the fourth Terminator movie had anything to do with Fox deciding to pick it up for a second season and the backward logic applied to make that suggestion work is astonishing to me. I do however think the writers strike had everything to do with TSCC getting a second season.

And whilst you may not like it or approve Fringe is very much a sci-fi show more so than Firefly for example ever was. But I really have no desire to get into a debate about whether shows like Buffy, Charmed, X-Files, Fringe, Firefly etc. are ‘real’ sci-fi shows or not.