Okay, I guess it’s my fault for using a misleading title. A lot of people maybe just skim the OP.
But, does anyone know the answer to this?
Probably not, at least in the United States, because NIELSEN measures ratings.
Do you have a Nielsen box? Then what you watch or don’t watch doesn’t matter. Since Nielsen’s box counts are in the thousands, you’d have a to have a large number of Nielsen families doing this.
Maybe they are, but probably not, since Nielsen investigates the viewing patterns of people before they sign you up. If you’re not a heavy TV viewer, you woudn’t even be in their database to begin with.
Nielsen Ratings are NOT a scientific poll, and in their defence Nielsen even says, it never was meant to be.
Nieslen goes to advertisers who are selling things and gets the stats from them about the people likely to buy products and signs up families accordingly.
That’s why when people say, “I won’t watch that show because of ‘XXX’,” they fail to realize unless they’re a Nielsen family what they watch or don’t watch matters not
I have always found it ironic that the foundation for a large part of our economy - advertising dollars - is built on the shakiest ground possible. Not just Nielsen methodology, but for all mass market media. Subscription rates are a poor indicator of total readership. It is one of those cases where smaller is better. Trade magazines with a total run of 20,000 issues have a better sense of the effectiveness of advertising on their audience than those with 200,000 or 2 million issues.
Unfortunately, short of a total consumer census, every other methodology will be as equally poor. I just wish the Nielsen families did not like wrestling so much.
(Speaking of idiocy on SyFy. I used to look forward to Sc-Fi Fridays - BSG, Dr Who, the SG series. Except for Eureka and Sanctuary I barely watch it anymore. And I don’t have high hopes for those series lasting much longer. But the WWE is the last thing I want to watch.)
Ala carte programming would give a much more accurate picture of the audience, but I think the whole industry is terrified of what that audience actually looks like.
I wouldnt be surprised if torrents killed that program in Oz.
By the time it got here the real SGU fans had already probably watched it on torrents and decided it was crap, so it never had a chance word of mouth wise.
Otara
It sounds like it had it’s chance, word-of-mouth wise, and blew it before the show ever aired.
I heard that torrents raped and killed a girl in 1990.
AAAAAAARRRGG!!!
I am not asking if torrents killed SGU!!!
<deep breath> Okay, it IS totally my fault because I never should have used that as a title.
However,** Markxxx**, that is an excellent point that I had neglected to consider. But, now I’m confused…according to this article,
““Deliverance” drew an estimated 1.035 million pairs of eyes.”
Is that confident assertion of the approximate number of viewers based entirely on an estimate which is taken from a statistical average? (Nielsen viewers.)
I dunno, I guess I thought maybe they can tell what a given cable box is tuned to…
Product placement? Already advertisers are changing the way their ads look because viewers record on Sky+ / TiVo and fast forward through the break. So you’ll see a lot more static logos on the adverts for the whole 30sec period, so that you still get the brand recognition during fast-forward.
The UK is taking some steps towards product placement, and they tell you up-front which products will be featured (which actually makes it more intrusive, as you end up playing “spot the product”.
Done well product placement would be OK for me, particularly in soaps and dramas. It’s always a bit false to see a character ask for toast with “a yeast-based spread, please” rather than “marmite”.
The risk is that it turns into that Wayne’s World scene, and it’s hard to see how nature documentaties would work in hair-care products or insurance plans.
“As we approach the tree-top lair of the fearsome ring-tailed marmoset our film crew are glad they renewed their great value life insurance with the friendly folks at Marmoset Botherers Mutual”
It is easy to torrent, but a lot of people I know just stream.
Because shows are aired in the US first, sometimes weeks before, torrenting and streaming kill these shows outside of it.
You have to remember that Sci-fi isn’t the incredibly geeky thing in England and Ireland that it is in the States - the millions who watch Dr. Who attest to that, and a huge audience is lost through internet viewing.
A lot of the HBO shows take months, sometimes more than a year, by which time everyone has long since seen a stream of it or by other nefarious means.
An issue in Canada, I don’t know about elsewhere, is that Space channel which shows/ed *BSG, Caprica, Stargate: All of Them, Being Human (both), * and Doctor Who broadcasts exclusively in standard def, which in SF terms may as well be glorious black and white. Itunes has HD episodes at $3 per, so it’s not like it’s inaccessible, but it is just as easy to download a HD torrent of a show as it is to download from itunes, the quality may be better on the torrent, and it’s free. We can’t access Hulu here, and while Space streams stuff on their side, the quality is even crappier than the SD. That’s fine for shows that aren’t visually complex, but watching BSG on standard def, as compared to HD or blu ray, is like watching it with Vaseline on your glasses. Seeing it on bluray after experiencing it only on SD was a revelation. Damn, they made pretty space fights.