Also:
Ratings aren’t about popularity, they’re about counting how many people watched. They are not a DUMB system for that purpose.
Imagine you just spent $100 million producing a tentpole movie for your movie studio. Movies live or die on opening day, so you need to get butts in seats this weekend or your entire studio might begin a death spiral.
In this hypothetical scenario, do you care at all that special snowflakes will be watching Show X in four months during a binge weekend? No, of course not. You care about reaching people this week, and will pay tons of money to make that happen.