You’re investing way more emotion into this than it deserves. We’re just talking about TV shows here, which ones stay and which ones get canceled isn’t actually a situation that effects the world.
Of course in some ways the TIVO and DVR data is meaningless. The job of the networks is to deliver eyeballs to commercials, people watching by DVR by and large skip commercials, therefore those viewers are not really contributing to the bottom lines, those eyeballs are not being delivered to commercials.
I have no idea what campaign your talking about, and frankly don’t care. Any such campaign was done by stupid people, and only paid attention to by even stupider people, stupid people scaring stupider people is a situation best left ignored by everybody else.
One way or the other though, it is still a free market, no matter how worked up you get about it. All the shows have to put up with the same flawed number gathering system, everybody involved is satisfied with the results of the numbers, and complaining about them is an exercise in pointless oxygen destruction.
One way or the other though, it is still a free market, no matter how worked up you get about it. All the shows have to put up with the same flawed number gathering system, everybody involved is satisfied with the results of the numbers, and complaining about them is an exercise in pointless oxygen destruction.
You do realize that a majority of the adult and teenage population of the USA use TV as touchstone on how to live and act? Right? (Even if it is mostly not a conscience effort to do so.)
Much of our political system is manipulated by issues that are presented on TV. (Though more and more the Internet is taking away the power of the Lamestream media to control the information much to their chagrin)
The power of TV to control the masses is still considerable even though daily the Internet peels away that power. And the people who control what is shown on TV should be scrutinized closely because of the power of the medium. And when there is clear evidence the system is manipulated to achieve a result (Nielsen has admitted they oversample certain demographics to avoid criticism) then that system should be subject to investigation by the public as well as any legal entities. (We are talking considerable sums of cash awarded based on ONE agencies control of viewing numbers.)
If viewing numbers are fudged to appease certain elements of our society then it gives bias to certain types of programs and people involved in them, if so then by definition the market is NOT Free. And being that Nielsen has admitted to such (even going as far as releasing their demogrpahic breakdowns) that particular argument is settled.
I see, maybe you are confused on the Term Free Market.
"A free market is a market in which prices of goods and services are arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers, determined generally by the natural law of supply and demand.
Yet if someone skews the defining numbers of the market saying that x number of this demographic of people watch a certain program based on our sampling of 10kish viewers then by definition your market is far from Free being it is having an outside control. The people who produce and write a show have no way to directly exchange with the customer without aide of the Network, the Network deals with the advertisers who use a skewed system of measuring results. So the Television market is a highly controlled one and does not even come close to the definition of a Free Market.
Especially being that the measurement of that exchange is vested in a single entity which controls the sampling numbers. (Why would Nielsen over-report certain demographics if they were seeking to provide an unregulated market being that engaging in such activity immediately invalidates any such premise?)