Nielsen ratings and our Kats...

From: chance <chance_at_unix.infoserve.net>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 07:20:01 -0700

>Yes! I do know how they work, because I was one of them on more than one
>occasion!

Cool. I took part in such a scheme for a few weeks, and was rewarded with
a whole two bucks. I think I tagged "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles"
each week, and from that I think we can readily see that I'm obviously not Nielsen
material.

>I think it's rather ironic that some of the networks have started listening
>to the net-speak.. It would seem to me that many "extremists" being appeased
>by TPTB would be more profitable than the "average" person.

There's still the old "Big Three" thinking prevalent among the programming set who
still think they're going to get 70-80 percent of the kid-viewers sitting cross-legged
with Corn Flakes in front of the tube Saturday Morning watching one show.
I think TMNT in its heyday was the last show capable of doing something like
that, but now we've got CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, WBN, UPN and countless
little cable channels like USA Network, Cartoon Network, MTV, TBS, TNT
ad infinitum to share that same cross-legged Corn Flakes chewer. It's fallacy to suppose
that even the most successful program is going to rivet the same percentage of viewers
to the tube as was the norm in the 70's, so the programming focus will have to
shift from shows geared towards the long-dead 70's model of "average", to
programming that caters to a quantifiable demographic of "extremists". Smaller
shows, smaller budgets - smaller segment of the audience supporting each effort.

If you *do* happen to strike gold with a formula like Kats that *does* attract
a great many viewers, then you run with it. You haven't necessarily created something
that appeals to the "average" 6-11-er (should such a creature exist), but you *have*
come up with something that's attracted a significant audience nonetheless.

(Man. My fur hurts just *thinking* about typing in all that know-it-all rhetoric.)
_____________________________________________________
"Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed
 antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters,
 through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in
 the winter of 1925. Endurance, Fidelity, Intelligence." -- "Balto"
_____________________________________________________

Received on Thu Jun 06 1996 - 10:54:53 PDT