Were people really thinking that the show was going to last beyond those 13 episodes? NBC threw Harmon a bone and will allow him to write a fine finish, but that’s it. I never thought for a second there would be a chance for more.
For the record, Gallup has been counting time-shifted views since about 2005. But they only count them for up to a week. Remember, ratings are not about shows at all: they are purely about how many people were there to watch the commercials. Nobody cares - or should care - if anyone watches the show without the commercials. Harmon and the cast would like to care, but given the size of their paychecks I do that they do. Commercials provide all the money. They are the be-all and end-all.
Yeah with DVRs it really doesn’t matter when shows come on. Neilsen sent me a TV logbook recently, it was way too much information to fill out (including them wanting you to write out your entire TV lineup), but my wife did the paperwork. Anyway they didn’t mention DVRs at all, so we just entered the time we watched shows, so we were watching Grimm on Tuesdays at 6:30 and things like that.
One question I have: do they count itunes and amazon downloads?
I don’t have tv so I have a season pass for Archer from Amazon. The day after the show airs I but it and it’s automatically sent to my cloud. How much of that money do the creators see? I want them to have my money.
But the linked article says nothing about being limited to 13 episodes, just that it’s on the fall schedule. Despite all the discussion about it, I haven’t seen any confirmed info that the show is only doing a half-season. All I could find was a “prediction” posted by Perez Hilton - just his opinion - and other blogs/sites apparently picked it up as news.
But if there is a factual source for the 13-episode season, if anyone has the link please post it here.
A half-hour tv show has eight to ten minutes of commercials, usually 16 to 20 30-sec ads (including in-house promos), each costing (or worth) hundreds of thousands of dollars. A half-hour show on Hulu has 3 or 4 30-second ads, I think, and can charge much less for each. My guess is that an online episode brings a tenth of what an on-air episode does, and that’s probably overstating it. (There’s an additional factor that local stations get to sell some of the airtime, which helps them to make a profit; I don’t know if NBC shares any of the online money.)
As for syndication, the availability of programs online does have at least some benefit for the networks: an extra tenth is still money. It works totally against the creators. Why should cable stations pay huge amounts to syndicate programs when they are available for free online? Online airings are much deadlier to syndication than to original airings. DVD sales were already a problem - why watch a show cut from the original to accommodate extra minutes of commercials when you can watch the full version without interruptions any time you want? Syndication is dying if not already dead.
Other than determining a mediums effectiveness, why would advertisers “care” about people who don’t watch the ads? If 30,000,000* people watch Community every week, and 40% of them don’t get exposed to the ads, why should I, the advertiser, pay for 30 million impressions when the show is actually delivering 18 million?
One would think for the product placement. I don’t know if they are thinking that way yet, but they need to start. Fewer and fewer people are watching TV with full blown ad watching as part of their schedule.
