Friday, June 01, 2007

Nielsen: DVRs Cause Lower Ratings

Duh. The old model of tracking viewers during certain times to watch shows seems to be on the way out. Also, the story mentions the Winter Olympics as causing an overall viewer increase last year. Excuse me while I snort. I think the second most important reason buried in the story is the number of repeats compared to last spring. They don't mention it's because almost all the new shows introduced last fall have been cancelled. Even shows premiering this spring were cancelled after three episodes (Drive, I'm looking in your direction). So, don't give DVR's all the blame. Fault the media execs for not giving new shows a chance to build fans, for playing musical time slots with longer running shows, and snorting the crack known as reality television. If you give viewers inferior product, they'll find something better, on subscriber networks, on rental shelves, or online. My advice for advertisers: buy blocks of TV time so your logo shows up inobtrusively during the show, like on live sporting events. That's how you can get around people wanting to watch shows on their own schedule who fastforward through the commercials.

2 comments:

  1. Hey Joe,

    "...and snorting the crack known as reality television."

    You just hit the nail directly on the head. I have never been a huge fan of "reality TV", but, back when the first one or two came out, I would at least give them a chance to win me over for a couple of episodes. Now, on the other hand, they just seem to be producing one bad imitation after another, and I refuse to watch any of them. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave much to watch. It seems like there is some kind of reality TV show airing just about every night of the week. Hopefully the geniuses in Hollywood will soon figure out that this is part of the reason for bad ratings. Give me a good action/thriller series or a well written sit-com that actually takes a little effort to write and produce, and leave it on the same night and time long enough for me to get into it (instead of making me play hide and seek to find what I am looking for), and I will be hooked on television again. Until then, thank goodness for a decent DVD collection and cheesy movies on SciFi. I guess I should thank them for not providing me any incentive to put off that yard work that so desperately needs to be done.

    Talk to ya later.

    -VoR-

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey VoR!

    Thanks for stopping by! I forgot to mention DVD box sets of popular shows are also putting a dent in ratings. My brother is not a Nielson family household, but he has said that purposely did not watch a single episode of 24 because he wants to buy the box set. I've noticed this trend of people waiting until the full season DVD set comes out, so they can watch the show in blocks, on their schedule, without commercials.

    Plus, those reality shows now only get big ratings for the first episode, the finale, and the reunion. All that crap in the middle? Who cares? But the media execs want to charge the advertisers big time for those specific time slots. Sorry, those shows are not the Super Bowl. Get over it.

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