It’s a fair point. Though I’m not surprised over the obsession on the FOX shows, I am surprised there isn’t more love for Flashpoint and Ghost Whisperer (though GW was a rerun on Friday and Flashpoint wasn’t, so Flashpoint building on its lead-in was probably expected).

And theoretically, at least, Numb3rs ought to be the most popular show on this blog!

Mind you, after wading through all 377+ comments — the bulk of which are about 2 shows that have more comments than viewers — “Okay, we get it” sums it up nicely. So I will instead talk positively about 1 show that I believe has gotten 2 whopping mentions in this thread prior to this. “Flashpoint” just earned its renewal. Won its time slot, #1 show of the night in several measures, and the first show in a few years to build on “Ghost Whisperer.” All that AND it’s subsidized by the Canadians. Take that, Trey Parker!

At 9pm, 18-49 viewing was down around 6% from the prior week, but some of that too can likely be attributed to basketball. Looking at only four weeks of HUT/PU data for Fridays, it’s hard to make any definitive claims as there is always something (basketball, movies, and week to week differences of less than 10% may just as likely attributed to the air!)

Short answer: I dunno.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/05/boxoffice.ew/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Just six weeks until we know for sure what they’re doing.

Its going to be a long six weeks.

“Are you suggesting Hinman is Nick C?”

No he was directing the post at Nick C because he’d like his thoughts on the report that was posted.

Right now the show aired the 3rd of the Whedon episodes, and there is still no up tick. People didn’t like the network take on the show, they don’t seem to like the Whedon vision for the show, does it make any sense to keep it on?

Are you suggesting Hinman is Nick C?

They live on the planet where you can’t produce Man on the Street without the five episodes that went before it and in reality I don’t think you can. Whilst you don’t strictly speaking need the five episodes that went before Man on the Street for that episode to work you need something before it. That’s not a pilot. Ideas within it are pilot-like but the episode itself wasn’t.

As I said previously the real problem Dollhouse has is that they focused far too quickly on Echo and the Dollhouse. They should have spent the first half of the season with the unconvincing (ex)FBI agent and make him a rounded and likeable character. Establish his motives are and what’s driving him. You make him the constant of the series and the driving force his desire to find out who Echo is and bring down the Dollhouse that way the audience has something and someone to care about. When you’ve got that you can move into the Dollhouse a little more.

The gender bias you mention as disadvantages for various ratings methods aren’t necessarily disadvantages. Assuming the appropriate research was done in advance, it’s just a matter of weighting the responses to achieve the necessary numbers.

Rough example: If it is known that 25% of women actually log their viewing and only 20% of men log theirs, then each woman represents four women and each man represents five men. With a sufficiently large sample size, the results should still be representative of a larger population.

Perhaps Whedon always knew this; you don’t call the final episode “Epitah” if you think you’ve got a winner.

Bye bye Dollhouse, hardly even knew ya.

Nobody ever accused the writers at TSCC of being consistent. They’ve made major blunders like that before.

The reality is I suspect that they really did NOT have a clear plan for the season and once they were told last fall that the show was dead if they didn’t liven it up, they crammed all this stuff in toward the end.

Another example of a blunder: Sarah has a transmitter implanted in her – before Winston was ordered to kill her? Why implant a transmitter in someone you’re going to kill anyway?

They’ve done this stuff all season because they’re not good at thinking things through. The problem with that is that the audience of hard core fans IS good at thinking things through and they spot this stuff, which then makes it harder to enjoy the show.

As I’ve said before, if you’re going to produce a show which requires some thinking, you’d better do better thinking than your audience, at least as much as is possible. TSCC doesn’t.

Diaries–users write down their use

— requires literacy
— viewers must remember to complete
— more likely to be completed by women

Use Recorder–electronically records use
—does not record actual viewing
—does not record who views

People Meter–electronic recording plus individual sign in
— high sample refusal rate (50% in US)
— men or more likely to record use than women
— younger, high TV users are more likely to record us

The last three episodes of Prison Break that aired on Monday at 9

December 22: 1.9 (18-49), 1.9 (18-34)
December 15: 2.3 (18-49), 2.1 (18-34)
December 8: 2.1 (18-49), 2.2 (18-34)

You compare that to what TSCC did on December 15 and 8 (a House repeat aired December 22)

December 15: 2.0 (18-49), 1.6 (18-34)
December 8: 1.9 (18-49), 1.6 (18-34)

I’m not really seeing this as a big improvement on the TSCC lead-in, maybe up a tenth or two.

However, I’m going to be optimistic. “Supernatural” is on its fourth season and has been renewed for a fifth and on average it has less ratings then these shows. Mind you, it’s broadcast by a different channel.

If CBS were having financial success to match its ratings success this season then I could see them at least thinking about putting something more competitive on Saturday next year just so they don’t have to cancel shows that are still performing relatively well. Unfortunately that’s potentially a very expensive experiment that CBS can’t afford to fund. Maybe Fox can get a super cheap deal on Terminator and stick TSCC and ‘Til Death on Saturday nights as some super-mega cheap programming block? Of course now I’ve opened up a whole new Terminator is going to be saved can of worms haven’t I…

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3150528

possibly of interest to some (maybe not).