Joss Whedon is under contract to Fox until 2010. They get first right of refusal on any show he makes, which is why he hasn’t done anything in a while. It wasn’t until Dushku talked him into working with a new batch of suits at Fox that he relented.
The one positive thing I’ve heard is that the goal of the show is not to score high Nielsen ratings for live TV, but to score highly with the DVR crowd. That’s why the Firday night timeslot makes sense. If so, it may just have a chance.
I don’t suppose this one will have a superpowered heroine in it, will it?
I’ll give it a chance but even I like to do stuff on Fridays.
Odesio
How does that work? Do advertisers care about DVR folks? How would they monitor their viewing habits? They might as well monitor bittorrent users and figure out how to stick ads in the bittorrents.
FWIW, Josh Friedman, producer of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles noted in an interview (sorry, can’t find the link right now) that his show was getting creamed in the ratings on Mondays and that with Fridays there is both less competition and less expectation to perform.
Dollhouse has had an order for 13 episodes so we’ll get at least that many.
For one, I think Tivo (and possibly others) do collect and provide some aggregate viewing statistics. Also, I did a Nielsen book a year or so ago and there was a provision for DVR’d programs. I was to write the program into the time slot during which I actually watched it, and there was a column/blank for me to write in the actual air date/time it was recorded.
Well lordy, the Nielsens is trying to adapt to the times. Whoda thunk?
I don’t know about Tivo. I’ve had Dishnetwork’s DVR, and I don’t think they had any idea what I DVRd. I thought it would be cool if they did, though.