From what I understand, broadcast television never recovered from the blow it was dealt by the 1988 writer's strike; once viewers had found other outlets, many stuck with their newfound friends. Now it seems that this may be happening again:
Just because your favorite dramas and comedies are back on the air after the writers strike doesn't mean you're necessarily watching them. A preliminary look at ratings of returning programs on the big broadcast networks reveals that the "majority of original programming has failed to return to its pre-strike levels among key demos," according to Havas media-buying shop MPG.The firm found that audiences are "coming back to some of the shows, but not most of them," said Nina Kanter, VP-director of communications analysis at MPG.
I feel like I used to mark off some of my week by television schedules--if it was Wednesday, that meant there would be an episode of House on the TiVo. Now that's pretty much fallen away. Nor can I say I particularly miss it, between Netflix, books, the internet, and the Wii. Most of the people I've talked to seem to feel the same way. It's early to tell yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if ratings took an even deeper dive this time around.
I have no idea what days any of my serial television plays on. For at least a couple of them, I'm not even sure if they are currently on the air or not, as I'm getting them from Netflix, or ITunes, or a box set. Once you get a big enough backlog on Tivo, there's not much point in caring about schedule. How content producers are expected to make money off of advertising in such an environment is beyond me.
Most of the people I've talked to seem to feel the same way.
I suspect this is human nature. I used to be an avid reader of the NY Times's opinion page. Then they went behind the wall, and I lost the habit. The habit never returned.
I find that if I record a program, I feel diminished need to actually watch it. "Tivo" (as a generic term for automated recording) may contribute to the reliterarization of America. Minisculy.
Same with me, Jasper.
Ratings are down quite a bit for American Idol, which being a non-scripted program was not affected by the writers' strike.
Well, I'll be the elitist who asks why anybody would watch episodic network television. To say the writing is bad is an insult to bad writing. Now, I've never watched "The Office", which, from the commercials, seems like it might have some decent scripts, but I've tried to watch perhaps six to eight highly rated or critically acclaimed shows over the past six or seven years, and haven't been able to get through more than one episode.
As Tivo use spreads, sports programming may become even more valuable to advertisers than it is today, as sports generally have to be watched live.
The networks need to broadcast in-depth journalism and news analysis if they are to capture a larger prime-time audience.
Ok, just kidding.
Seriously, if they want to grow their audience, I suggest free hard-core porn.
Peter, I watch a lot of sports, and hardly ever watch an event live, since time shifting means I can skip commercials.
if it was Wednesday, that meant there would be an episode of House on the TiVo.
You watch House? Geez, and to think I kinda felt bad about all the nasty things these liberal crazies were saying about you.
I prefer watching a show from beginning to end on DVD. It goes a lot faster without the commercials, I can watch the episodes at my convenience rather than when the network choose to air them, I have the ability to pause and rewind if I get interrupted, and I actually worked out the numbers that it is cheaper for me to feed my TV habit by buying them on DVD (second-hand) than it would be to get a subscription to cable and TIVO.
* By which I mean shows that are currently on network TV and cable that I want to watch rather than older shows that aren’t broadcast any longer.
I don't think that's elitist at all. I think it shows you have good taste.
With the continuing spread of alternative methods of consuming entertainment, some of which Megan listed, I think it's no surprise that the broadcast networks have taken another ratings hit. Also, how many of the shows with "original programming" that "returned" had been on the air for multiple seasons previous to the strike? After a long hiatus like that, a show that's been on air for several years telling basically the same story over and over (like most sitcoms) will lose the inertia of their regular viewers, as those viewers find other pursuits that are more rewarding during that time. I would think dramas would fare better, especially genre shows like "Lost" and BSG that have more arc and characterization. They would bring something "new" to the table.
As far as sports, I never time-shift those; I watch them on TV as a more economical alternative to going to them in person. But I can see that if I were an English Premier League soccer fan, where the games are at 4 AM local time, I would be time-shifting those (and I have acquaintances who do).
I like House, too, but lately it has sucked. Every Tuesday at 9:00 I tune in, but it's always kind of the same. His team diagnose singers. I don't much like his new team - a sarcastic English guy, an overweight black guy who talks funny and a woman with an obvious drug problem who thinks nothing is wrong with any of the patients. They can't be very good doctors either; every week one of the patients is gone.
The most succint summary of House I ever heard was: Every week, Hugh Laurie is granted an hour in which to behave as an ass. (And the absence of a corresponding elephant hour is more evidence of liberal bias in the media, I would reckon.)
It's TV Turnoff week - Get rid of your idiot box Megan and stop being a media slave!
http://www.tvturnoff.org/
He should be very good at that, though; that's what he did on Blackadder. Of course, he was just a foil for Rowan Atkinson on that show.
Haven't watched House, don't plan to start either.
He should be very good at that, though; that's what he did on Blackadder
It's completely and totally different. You should set aside 10 minutes to see it just for the sheer amazing difference of it.
I hate the show, but as my wife is taking care of an infant all day, she has clicker rights.
Writers: self-pwn3d!
Ratings are down quite a bit for American Idol, which being a non-scripted program was not affected by the writers' strike.
It could also be that some of the American Idol audience were people who tuned in either before, or after, watching other, scripted, programs, and that Idol itself wasn't enough to get them to tune in.
Some things, see f9ile: Ripley's, aren't found on TV, see: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/jos-can-you-see-bush-s-trojan-taco
José Can You See? Bush’s Trojan Taco
By Greg Palast
Monday, April 21, 2008
(For TomPaine.com)
Psst! George Bush has a secret.
While you Democrats are pounding each other to a pulp in Pennsylvania, the President has snuck back down to New Orleans for a meeting of the NAFTA Three: the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico.
You’re not supposed to know that – for two reasons:
First, the summit planned for the N.O. two years back was meant to showcase the rebuilt Big Easy, a monument to can-do Bush-o-nomics. Well, it is a monument to Bush’s leadership: The city still looks like Dresden 1946, with over half the original residents living in toxic trailers or wandering lost and broke in America.
The second reason Bush has kept this major summit a virtual secret is its real agenda. More important, the agenda-makers, the guys who called the meeting, must remain as far out of camera range as possible: The North American Competitiveness Council.
Never heard of The Council? Well, maybe you’ve heard of the counselors: the chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron Oil, Lockheed-Martin and 27 other multinational masters of the corporate universe.
And why did the landlords of our continent order our presidents to a three-nation pajama party? Their term is “harmonization.”
Harmonization has nothing to do with singing in fifths like Simon and Garfunkel. Harmonization means making rules and regulations the same in all three countries. Or, more specifically, watering down rules – on health, safety, labor rights, oil drilling, polluting and so on - in other words, any regulations that get between The Council members and their profits.
Take for example, pesticides. Wal-Mart and agri-business don’t want to reduce the legal amount of poison allowed in what you eat. Solution: “harmonize” US and Canadian pesticide standards to Mexico’s.
Can they do that? Can Bush just say, “Eat your peas – even if they’re radioactive?” Under NAFTA, at least the way George Bush reads it (or has it read to him), he can. At any rate, he does.
The three chiefs of state will meet privately with the thirty corporate chiefs where they are also expected to legally erase more of our borders, to expand the “NAFTA highway.” Technically, the NAFTA highway is a set of legal rules governing transcontinental shipment. Some fear NAFTA highway expansion will allow a new flood of cheap Mexican products into the US and Canada. Not so. Their hunger to expand the NAFTA highway is to bring in even cheaper Chinese goods.
Say what?
As trade expert Maud Barlow explained to me, the new “NAFTA highway” will allow Chinese stuff dumped into Mexico to be hauled northward as duty-free “Mexican” products. That’s one of the quiet agendas of this “Summit for Security and Prosperity,” the official Orwellian name for this meet. Think of the SSP “harmonization” as the Trojan Taco of trade.
Barlow is Chairwoman of the Council of Canadians. She is known as the “Ralph Nader of Canada” (not Nader version 2.0, The Spoiler Candidate, but Nader version 1.0, the consumer advocate). Because Americans are too distracted by the Punch-and-Judy primaries to complain about this lobby-fest on the bayou, Canadian Barlow is leading street protests against this greed-grab.
I caught up with this courageous Canadian (I’ve seen her face down corporate bullying we can’t imagine in the US) on her way down to New Orleans. Barlow’s particular concerns are first, the NSS agreement promotes a five-fold increase in the mining of Canadian tar sands for import, as liquid crude oil, into the USA, an idea filthier than a re-make of Debbie Does Dallas. “This is an insane model of development,” she says, especially given Bush’s recent claim that he wants to slow global warming.
Bush himself is pushing his Canadian and Mexican counterparts to adopt US-style “Homeland Security” measures so that, says Barlow, “we’ll all be zip-locked together in one security bag.”
There will be other anti-SSP protesters in New Orleans as well, from America’s populist Right. They are concerned that the Security and Prosperity Summit is worse than the “NAFTA on steroids” that Barlow fears. The populists see in the SPP a nascent “North American Union,” and the elimination of the good old US of A.
They’re wrong, of course. The U.S. of A. has been long eliminated, at least economically. The Competitiveness Council is a multinational crew, with one shared set of country clubs, beach homes, art collections, union busters and lobbyists knowing no borders.
The populist radio hosts railing against the coming North American Union don’t realize that these CEOs won’t take away their flags or Fourth of July or Star-Spangled Banner. The rags and flags will always be kept around to con the schmucks along the Yahoo Belt into donating their children to the Iraq Occupation or other misadventures. A billionaire like Carlos Slim, the richest man on the planet (sorry, Mr. Gates), didn’t buy the Mexican government to “protect” his nation from Gringos but to protect his media monopoly.
So there is no United States of America nor Canada nor Mexico - at least as we like to imagine ourselves in our national fairy tales: self-governing democracies run by we the people or nosotros el pueblo. There’s just the diktats of the North American Prosperity Council. Get used to it.
Barlow said that the US Ambassador to Canada told her the legal changes wrought in New Orleans will not be put before the three national Congresses for a vote. “We don’t want to open up another NAFTA.” So, they’ll skip the voting stuff. Democracy is so, like, 20th Century.
Is Bush just a reluctant participant in this “harmonizing” of our economic fate? The meetings are secret, so I can’t say for sure. But I note that, at the opening ceremony, if you read his lips, you can see our president singing the national anthem as, “José, can you see?”
****************
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Sign up for Palast’s investigative reports for BBC on RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/gregpalast-articles.
Make a donation to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund and receive a DVD of the untold story of the drowning of New Orleans, Big Easy to Big Empty, made for Democracy Now! at http://www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org.
Note: On May 1, in New York, Palast will speak at the international conference of the victims of Barrick Gold mining operations, the Canadian-American company whose board members included the former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney and the former President of the United States, George Bush Sr. More information coming soon at www.GregPalast.com
rafinlay - With me its the opposite. Once I Tivo something I feel an increased need to watch it eventually (although obviously a decreased need to watch it at any particular time). I'm reluctant to delete things without watching them. Sometimes too reluctant.
Maude Barlow is a professional anti-globalization activist, not "a trade expert". She gets paid to say that NAFTA is bad.
Dan,
the article was written by Greg Palast
http://www.gregpalast.com/
and, it would seem, the majority of the piece's points are his. seeing that, which of his points wouldyou think are mistaken?
MEH,
I wouldn't care to offer an opinion on which of his points are mistaken, being that he doesn't offer any supporting evidence for any of his claims; I certainly can't be bothered to refute unsupported claims. I'm a busy guy. But his attempt to spin a paid anti-trade activist as "a trade expert" certain gives ample reason for skepticism as to his intellectual honesty.
His attempt to claim that Bush's New Orleans meeting is somehow some sort of dark secret is also pretty funny, though, especially since it is being covered by all the major news outlets.
Re: Hugh Laurie
Get some "Jeeves and Wooster" DVDs, then compare to the performance in "House M.D." "Blackadder" is all well and good, but it didn't give him nearly the scope that playing Bertie Wooster did.
I watch "House" for Laurie's performance, which I like even if the character is a jerk. It's fun to watch people play jerks and villains well.
i use the dvr to pause sports, so i can watch without commercials (or any of the other dead time). but you can't generally record sports for viewing (e.g.) the next day, because you'll find out what happened somehow, which will ruin it (for most).
I love hour long dramas with long story arcs. I never ever watched TV until I became old and lazy. Now I watch it alot. I tend to take treat it like a drug addiction. I watch like an entire season in a week. I was sick a few weeks back and ended up finding Grey's Anatomy on Xbox Live. I watched 80 episodes in 6 days. When my fever broke I realized I had just spent a hundred and sixty bucks so I could watch pretty people while stuck in bed. One thing I have never done or understood was arranging my calendar to watch a particular show. This is probably why I never really discovered television until netflix and timeshifting and downloading became the norm. The irony is the moment I jump on board the ship starts sinking :(