Time for mainstream US networks to drop SF/Fantasy?

[Professor Zoom]

We need different shows on network TV, they just need to be smart and stop ending 13 / 22 episode seasons on a cliffhanger, more so if you are a new show.

The purpose of a season ending cliffhanger is to increase the odds that the audience will make an effort to remember the show when it comes back in the fall, when the same audience is being pummelled by advertising for new shows that might look like a better way to spend their limited TV-viewing hours.

Without a cliffhanger, how do you ensure that the audience returns?

I dunno. They mananged it okay back in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

There is nothing similar about the entrainment landscape of today than to the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Other than this is TV.

Everything else has changed. Dramatically.

 

[Sindatur]

For some reason, I'm thinking Gilligan's Island had cliffhangers...

If it's a random sample, then the tastes should also be randomly sampled. The problem is that TrekBBS is not a random sample - this is a place where only sci fi fans congregate - so the perceptions here are skewed of just how popular sci fi actually is.

Don't blame Nielsens for the TrekBBS skew.

Actually, that is precisely my point. If everyone on this board was a Neilsen monitored TV viewer (let's call it 1000 members) and each Neilsen monitored person represented 10,000 ratings people, that would get you 10,000,000 viewers, just based on the members of this board alone, your ratings would be skewed higher than reality for the SciFi shows. Since it's more of a niche genre, the probability is reversed, and you are likely to miss alot of them

You are not very good at statistics are you? The fact that a random sample would get all the members of a particular message board (or fans of only one genre) is a near mathematical impossibility.

I realize that, but, it's nowhere near an impossibility that it would miss everyone of them

 

[Nerys Myk]

The purpose of a season ending cliffhanger is to increase the odds that the audience will make an effort to remember the show when it comes back in the fall, when the same audience is being pummelled by advertising for new shows that might look like a better way to spend their limited TV-viewing hours.

Without a cliffhanger, how do you ensure that the audience returns?

I dunno. They mananged it okay back in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

There is nothing similar about the entrainment landscape of today than to the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Other than this is TV.

Everything else has changed. Dramatically.

Yeah, but the subject was "clifhangers" Which is a format/style choice/preference thing. People like serials and character arcs more. Im not sure if that has any connection with the rise of cable and fracturing of the audience.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I dunno. They mananged it okay back in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

There is nothing similar about the entrainment landscape of today than to the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Other than this is TV.

Everything else has changed. Dramatically.

Yeah, but the subject was "clifhangers" Which is a format/style choice/preference thing. People like serials and character arcs more. Im not sure if that has any connection with the rise of cable and fracturing of the audience.

I don't know if it has anything to do with it initially, but now the big cliff hangers are used to bring people back. As are continuing stories.

Hell, pilots of old were rarely the beginning of something, we started in Media Res. If Star Trek had started now, we would see Kirk getting assigned the Enterprise. But back then, it was just a mission like any other.

But, now, networks want to make it appointment TV. They want you watching things LIVE. So, we have more continuing stories, we have more OMG, what will happen NEXT? because they want you there looking at the TV, rather than playing the xbox.

 

[RAMA]

Very few shows get the ratings of 20-25 years ago. Its probably actually easier for sci fi shows to stay on the air these days. Still, I think we'd just better assume that sci fi will do better in the niche market, and hope it continues to do well there on basic and maybe in the future, pay cable.

RAMA

 

[Professor Zoom]

Very few shows get the ratings of 20-25 years ago. Its probably actually easier for sci fi shows to stay on the air these days. Still, I think we'd just better assume that sci fi will do better in the niche market, and hope it continues to do well there on basic and maybe in the future, pay cable.

RAMA

If you think about it, most shows should seek out their niche market.

Mad Men would never have survived on a network, for example. Not enough people watch it.

Personally, I think that is sort of the future, finding an audience that is really loyal, maybe small, but absolutely loyal.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

You are not very good at statistics are you? The fact that a random sample would get all the members of a particular message board (or fans of only one genre) is a near mathematical impossibility.

Yeah, this is the point at which I simply stop debating statistics. It's a topic that requires at least basic knowledge of the subject or else we just go round and round in circles...

Nielsens knows what they're doing. If anyone knows better, start your own competing rating company with your superior and heretofore unknown approach to statistical sampling. You'll drive them out of business and make a fortune, so why are you wasting your time on some silly BBS?