The Death of Television

I’m a little angry with TV networks. They keep making fun, well-produced shows and then cancelling them once I get interested. This is nothing short of emotional abuse and it needs to stop. But why is this happening? I know people are watching the shows, but their ratings are pathetic. So I decided to do some research. Here is what I found:

There is a guy named Nielsen, well at least there was. (Actually I don’t know if he was a real person, but that point is moot.) Since the 1950s a company called Nielsen has been installing monitoring boxes in a small percentage of people’s home, watching what they watch, and then saying this is an accurate survey of what the American people care about. This has become the industry standard of judging how well a show does, and they are the only company doing it. So if Nielsen says no one is watching your show, it is taken as gospel and the network cancels it. This would make sense except that…

NEILSEN is a dirt liar! They claim to have an accurate depiction of what Americans are watching, but this isn’t true. What’s worse is that everyone knows it. Lets take a look at the data:

How the system works: From what I could find, Nielsen tracks around 20,000 households (approx. 0.0002% of American households according to the last census). Here is the interesting part: They track DVR usage differently than live TV. So lets say you want to watch two shows that are on at the same time, so you DVR one of them. If you don’t watch it the same day, your numbers are not counted right away. Then when you do watch it, you fast forward through the commercials (like all good Americans with a DVR would do). You are counted as watching the show, but your show is docked points because you didn’t watch the commercials.

Ratings are about the ads not the views: The networks want people to watch the shows, because they make money off the ads. If a show has a lot of views, but they are all skipping the ads (Fast forwarding on DVR, or changing the channel) the shows C3 rating drops, and it gets cancelled.

Then we come to the internet. A large percentage of people under 35 are ditching cable. It’s simply cheaper to watch TV on Hulu or a variety of other online services. Nielsen does keep track of online viewers, but there is a catch:

1) People usually have to wait to see the shows on Hulu. Nielsen only keeps track for 7 days, so all of those shows that make you wait a week to see the online broadcast don’t really count the online views. If you wait to watch your show till the weekend, you probably won’t be counted either because most studios go off the number from the day after the TV broadcast.  Since the online world is designed to work around your schedule, it isn’t fast enough for Nielsen and is marginalized.

2) When you watch a show online, you don’t see the same commercials. Because of this online views are counted separately, and their voice doesn’t count for much. For example, a show that 9 million online views and 1 million TV views doesn’t count as much as a show with 2 million TV watchers.

It basically boils down to this: Since technology is moving fast than our ability to track it, shows that appeal to technologically savvy people are handicapped. This explains why shows featuring spoiled rich kids are doing well, and shows with a plot line are on the verge of extinction.