TV Ratings... are you one of the chosen ones?

[ashoka1]

In light of Moore & Eick's letter, I found this article on T.V. Ratings:
stuffo.howstuffworks.com/question433.htm

However, after reading about how this crap works...
I can't believe that BSG's life may be hanging on a system like this:

In the U.S., the term "TV ratings" immediately makes people think of "Nielsen".
Nielsen uses a technique called statistical sampling to rate the shows -- the same technique that pollsters use to predict the outcome of elections.
To find out who is watching TV and what they are watching, the company gets around 5,000 households to agree to be a part of the representative sample for the national ratings estimates.
To find out what people are watching, meters installed in the selected sample of homes track when TV sets are on and what channels they are tuned to. A "black box," which is just a computer and modem, gathers and sends all this information to the company's central computer every night. Then by monitoring what is on TV at any given time, the company is able to keep track of how many people watch which program.

[Soulmage]

Yeah, that's WAAAAY too small a sample IMO. They ought to have 50,000 sets, considering they're gauging the viewing habits of more than 100,000,000 households.

[Big Brother]

My family was a Nielsen family for a few weeks about 15 years ago. When they saw we pretty much just watched PBS and the Disney Channel (my sister then being about 5), they never again asked us to participate. At the time, they didn't yet have meters, just a paper journal listing all the shows on TV with spaces to say who watched what.

I've gotten a few phone-call surveys from non-Nielsen people surveying TV viewing habits since. I made sure to list all my favorite TV shows, even Firefly once AFTER it had already been cancelled.

[Sci-Fi]

At another forum, one person that volunteered for the Sci-Fi Channel's Mall Promotion asked the question about what the ratings were expected to be in order for the Sci-Fi Channel to give the go-ahead for a second season. The answer was "they sold the show at a 2.5 HH share, and want similar to renew." For comparison, the average ratings for SG-1 is about 1.8 and SG:Atlantis episode ratings are below:
16 July: 1.01 “Rising” — 3.4
23 July: 1.03 “Hide and Seek” — 2.47
30 July: 1.04 “38 Minutes” — 2.45
6 August: 1.05 “Suspicion” — 2.17

For any Sci-Fi show to average a 2.5 share, it's going to be a tough sell and will probably need the fans of the show to constantly try to get or ask people (nicely) to watch it and support it on a weekly basis. Taking a page out of the Farscape book, fans should also consider writing to the sponsors/advertisers of the show and thank them for their support of the show and that you purchase their products (send receipts if you have them). Hopefully as more people discover the show, the rating numbers will go up or at least hold steady.

One has to wonder how much BSG costs per episode, especially when the SkyOne Channel kicks in about $400,000 per episode.

[Big Brother]

Sci-Fi fans can be a bit fanatical when it comes to sponsors of troubled genre shows they adore. I used to be a big fan of Andromeda (it went downhill after they fired the original writing team). An early sponsor of Andromeda, at least on WGN, was the Pilsbury Cook Book, of all things. At the time, I worked in a bookstore. I promptly moved that particular cookbook to a more prominent shelf location and began recommending it to customers instead of the Betty Crocker equivalent cookbook. All this specifically because they sponsored a show I liked. I can't say I'm typical (of anything, really), but when roused to support our favorite shows, we do rise to the occasion.