- From Game of Thrones to the new Arrested Development, television is better than ever. And it’s not just a lucky accident. Turns out that networks and advertisers are using all-new metrics to design hit shows. Under these new rules, Twitter feeds are as important as ratings, fresh ideas beat tired formulas, and niche stars can be as valuable as big names. Case in point: Mad Men and Community’s Alison Brie.
Wired: for people who want to learn stuff but don't have the ability to determine they're being lied to This article is stem-to-stern bullshit. It is based on one fundamental, unsupported allegation: Except they aren't. And they haven't. And the reason the networks are 50% reality and 40% sports is that you can't timeshift that stuff, so you watch it live, so you watch advertisements, and if you don't think advertisers don't know how to sell products on a single screen you're high. So everyone STILL cares about the Nielsens. I'm serious. This article is fundamentally, stupendously wrong on many, many fronts. Shows like Community and Mad Men and Walking Dead exist because they're cheap, Best Buy sells a lot of boxed sets, and because as a "cable" product it can be sold for more overseas. It has exactly FUCKALL to do with neilsen ratings. Fuckin' Battlestar Galactica never did better than 2.7 million viewers. Put another way - I mix a lot of reality television and I've never once mixed a show that did AS BADLY as Battlestar's best showing. But nobody buys Shark Tank boxed sets. Nobody has a Fear Factor coffee mug. Hell's Kitchen does not generate catch phrases. It has no tail. So the networks show a lot of reality and sports because they make their money right then. AMC shows a lot of scripted because they make their money on ancillaries and tertiary sales. But let's not skip the elephant in the room: an episode of Mad Men costs about $2m, which is crazy-stupid expensive for cable. An episode of Game of Thrones, on the other hand, cost $900k. Compare and contrast: an episode of The Voice costs $6m per episode. An episode of Friends cost $8m. That's okay, though - The Voice could count on 10-11m people watching it every night, while Mad Men can count on about 1.7 (Wired's numbers, to no one's surprise, aren't using the industry-standard Nielsen metric, which matters, because that governs ad money). Fuckin' CSI:NY gets 8-12m people watching it even when it's reruns. IN short, all your favorite shows are ratings disasters because they're cheap and can afford to be. Throwing Firefly into the mix is bullshit because FIREFLY WAS THE MOST EXPENSIVE SHOW ON FOX. If Firefly cost what Mad Men cost, it'd be into its 4th year of syndication by now. Fuckin' Terra Nova was $4m per episode and Fox killed that right quick when it wasn't performing, fans be damned. Fuckin' Wired.The lesson is that once you identify and track how an audience actually interacts with television, it’s only a matter of time until advertisers create ways to sell stuff to that audience.
Budget, Mona Lisa Smile: - $75m Budget of Mona Lisa Smile that went directly into Julia Roberts' pocket: $25m You've seen Friends. How much could you make that show for? When they started, the cast made $22,500 per show. When they finished, they were all making a million each (plus syndication royalties). In other words, Season 10 cost $6m more per episode than Season 1.
At the risk of offending people, the answer to this question is: only idiots still watch shows like Shark Tank -- and only idiots haven't figured out how to watch TV illegally online at more convenient times. Nielsen ratings self-select for stupidity. (This is theoretically going to change in fall; they're expanding their ratings formula to include some other mediums.) The absolute tragedy of all of this is pointed out in the article -- it took shows like Firefly, martyrs for the cause, to bring about a change. The statement "all your favorite shows are ratings disasters" could never have been true before, because those shows didn't last like Breaking Bad has. TV as a form of entertainment is undergoing cataclysmic change (finally) -- see House of Cards, which was released season en masse directly onto the Internet. TV is following the music industry in glacially entering the 21st century. Hopefully films are next. EDIT: that was the ugliest article I've seen since everyone used Internet Explorer.
I agree with everything you said there, couldn't have been any more spot on. Is House of Cards any good? I just got Netflix and have been looking into shows to start watching.
I'm not a fan. I think it is uninspired. Spacey's role is flat, and there are parts where he directly addresses the camera that don't really add anything, but make you remember that you are watching a show. IMHO it's plenty watchable, but doesn't bring anything new.
House of Cards. I couldn't stop watching it, but I also didn't really love it. I don't think it will have the staying power that West Wing does, and I'm not sure that many people will be waiting in anticipation for season 2 but I'm sure a lot of people will watch it.
The West Wing is something else I should really get to watching, maybe I'll do that first...
I literally just finished watching an episode (of the west wing) 10 minutes ago. It's not the best TV ever, but it's enjoyable. I haven't watched Always Sunny in a while and have an entire season to watch. Think I'll get cracking on that tonight. I will say that I would guess that somewhere between House of Cards and the West Wing lies the reality of American Politics.
I need to watch it again since I had it on in the background while I was working, but the first few episodes that I really sat down and watched were fantastic. If your a kevin spacey fan he does not disappoint and using david fincher (Girl with a Dragon Tattoo) as Director was a fantastic choice.
Sorry, you are not at fault here, but this is like the fourth time I've seen people qualify David Fincher's name with "the guy who directed Girl with a Dragon Tattoo." First, Fincher's famous. Second, he directed Fight Club. It's like qualifying Steven Spielberg by saying "this is the guy who directed War Horse."
Duly noted. Its hard to know the expertise of the person your talking to online and so far I haven't met many people who don't need the qualification. Fincher still isn't as recognizable as Spielberg, Scorsese or Abrams even though he's famous. Even Abrams isn't instantly recognizable to most people who don't know their directors which I find pretty appalling
Oh jesus. Whoever designed the beginning of this article needs a talking to. It's like someone vomited words on the page. But I have to head off to a dinner, this article looks interesting and I will read it later and try to provide a real comment opposed to my shock from opening it.
I agree with you on that. I found it to be a pretty thorough and interesting article that talks about why some shows with poor Nielsen ratings are still running. It also goes over how the Nielsen ratings might be outdated by this point.
If the Nielsen ratings don't even consider online viewing, then it's been outdated. I'm not even sure when the last time I watched television was. What they should also consider are sites similar to what megaupload were like, if there is a way to gauge that sort of thing. Then I think ratings will be the most accurate.
They address this in the article, but one thing to consider is that ratings are done for advertisers, and if you downloaded a show, you won't watch ads, right? So that data may not be helpful to you unless you have product placement going on in the show. Pretty hard to do product placement for certain period shows, or sci fi, that kind of thing.
Yeah that's something I hadn't thought about. I wonder how the rating systems are dealing with more and more people trying to circumvent advertisements.