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Our Ratings, Ourselves
Ant writes "This long New York Times article (10 pages; no registration required) reports on the mismeasure of television (TV)." From the article: "One of the great contradictions of modern American life is that almost everyone watches TV while almost no one agrees anymore about what it really means to watch television....when it comes to figuring out how many of us are watching these shows, and whether we're paying attention while we're watching and even whether we're actually noticing the advertisements among the shows we may or may not be watching -- well, this is where things get tricky..."
As someone who is recently starting to advertise (see below), that's one of the things that I'm finding much more difficult to determine.
For instance, advertising on google adwords, I see that my link gets 4,000 or so impressions. Does that mean that the person is even looking at the sponsored links on the side of the page? Taking it a step further, I had one day on google syndication that had 100,000 impressions. Only 60 or so people clicked through. I think a lot more internet viewers nowdays just glaze over ads.
I started doing advertisement by promoting on StumbleUpon. How do I know that the people reaching aren't annoyed with being redirected to a page they have absolutely no interest in? After all, on StumbleUpon, my page ends up fitting under web development. I'm sure all those people who are looking for things like SQL, CSS, or PHP tutorials must love me. 1600 hits. 0 emails. 0 signups. Maybe if they added a hosting section.
I'm thinking of moving my campaign off the internet, and into print / radio. But even then, how many people are just going to glaze through the ad when it's being played on the radio? For how many people I *might* appeal to, how many people will I *not* appeal to?
Ultimately, I guess advertising comes down to how much money I spend, versus how much I get back, relevance be damned. And I guess that's why spammers are around, after all. No, I will not start spamming people. That's just evil. Then again, Bill Hicks said, "Those of you who are in marketing and advertising, kill yourselves. You are satan's little helpers."
I really wish there were a way to just have my ad pop up for people who actually are interested in what I have to offer. Then I can leave everyone else the hell alone.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
okay, so that's not totally true, but for all intents and purposes, it is. and what isn't propaganda is mostly shows for stupid people ("lets see who'll get voted off the island next!") or for people who need to be told what they like ("you'll love this new mccdonalds deal").
The Cryptography Forum is new and needs help
I do not watch TV! -- Oh believe me, Puerto Rican TV stations suck man! You sit in your sofa, get confortable to watch TV and after 3 minutes you go like "Oh-ah, sckk!!" and pass out. Seriously, stay way off the Puerto Rican TV channels!
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
You're exactly right, though some reality tv isn't all that cheap to make, example, The Amazing Race, which I watch because I find it interesting not just the team dynamics but all the absolutly beautiful places they go around the world. On the other hand, there is plenty of crap, as there are always exceptions to a rule.
One thing I've noticed over the past few years is that TV advertising just doesn't register with me any more. I'll be watching TV with my partner, ads will come on and she'll ask me what I think about product X. I'll ask "What brought that question on?", she'll point at the TV and the ad will still be showing. It simply never registered with me at all.
After 42 years, it seems I've developed an excellent TV content filter, that just needs a bit more tweaking to filter out reality and "talent contest" programs to make me happy.
I'm curious: is anyone else in the same boat? Has advertising become effectively invisible to you?
"What percentage [of viewers] were young white men? .... The marketers -- the people who want to make sure they're reaching the right fragment with the right ad -- would love to know. But it's been getting hard to say."
As a member of that particular demographic I'd wager it's less than they think. I cancelled my cable a few years ago and barely watch TV at all anymore. Most of my friends don't watch as much TV as they used to either. My entertainment hours are mostly spent on gaming and movies. I get my news from the web (IMHO TV is a medium unsuited for news). I do rent TV shows on DVD now and again.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Well, I read the first few pages. Let me start out with a disclaimer, lately, I've come to hate TV. There's very few shows I watch and most are a waste of time.
I've always thought... isn't there some technical way to find out what people are watching, anonymously? Like, from PVR prefs or recordings, draw on broadcast antennas (radio or broadcast tv/cable)? I mean, I know my website sucks because it gets like 150 hits a month if I'm lucky. And that's only the ones I probably do myself.
Hell throw out incentive. My grocery store gets my "vote" for what sort of laundry detergent I like because our family buys it all the time, amd obviously its popular because there's tons of coupons for it. Can't they do that with TV? I'll sign up for HBO if you knock a couple of bucks off the bill every month for having me do some (online and accurate) poll.
Maybe this is some kinda weird test by the NYT. Since when did they start having articles you could read without going through their silly registration process?
FLR
They're watching it because programming execs have made it the only thing to watch. They love that it's cheap to make. You can film it in a month and already have it ready to go. These things don't get mammoth ratings (with an exception or two like American Idol, which thankfully isn't saturated everywhere like Survivor was), but the ratings they do get is enough to justify the cheap cost to make them. And since it's so damn easy, why bother starting a new sitcom with actors and writers when you can just put an ad in the paper for college kids and stick them in a situation to film it?
I'm a teen, yet I never (NEVER) watch TV. Ironically, I have one in my room.. It gets used as a blue light source but nothing else. Honestly, I don't miss it. Programming is crap from what I'd experienced, and it bores me. I'd rather chill out with any book on my shelf. (Several Jim Morrison biographies and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry right now)
;)
TV is boooring. Get my news online, get my entertainment from playing guitar, writing poetry, reading, listening to music, playing games, hanging out with my gf. Honestly, it doesn't hurt to work the brain muscles a tad. Or the fingers.
Meanwhile, real shows with truly relevant and important content like The Eyes of Nye are disregarded even on public broadcasting, and only seen in a handful of markets. Science is being increasingly dumbed down and compromised to be entertaining first and science second; consumers don't want entertaining science, they just want no-work entertainment. Heaven forbid someone actually has to think around here.
Although I don't like reality tv it doesn't bother me that it exists. Its not like I am exceptionally happy with the other kinds of tv out there. All I want is my battlestar galactica, and if some people out there like reality tv, more power to them. Dropping reality tv will not make good shows appear.
Philosophy.
Anyone remember when there were 2-3 seconds of black silence between commercials? I remember noticing it, as the years passed, decrease and decrease. Now, there is no gap at all. One commercial blasts away, ends, and the next one comes immediately blasting away.
At least let me take a breather between "commercial messages!" I genuinely think commercial watching was a more pleasant experience just ten years ago. There are a few gems ("It's so easy, even a caveman can do it"), but for the most part even the jokes are completely unfunny, and the car commercials are so phoney that I know nothing about the car other than it looks good on a wet mountain turn.
I didn't used to feel this way. There used to be a time I'd sit through commercials and didn't mind them. They've gotten steadily stupider and repetitive, even ripping each other off.
[SNIP]
It is designed to have somoene sit in front of a television while countless hours go away, never to come back.
[SNIP]
I wish I had back all the hours I had watching TV. It has harmed me.
And so says Slashdot user John Seminal, who has already posted 15 times to slashdot today within the past 8 hours, and at least 9 posts yesterday (there might be more posts prior to those 9, slashdot cuts off backposts after some number).
How do I get all those hours back? How do I go on living knowing my formative years were spent watching the Dukes of Hazzard?
Well, apparently your post-formative years were spent lapping up the postings and dupes of Taco and company, is that really much of an improvement?
This is where people start debating that internet is better than TV for whatever reasons - you can learn from it, you can choose your content, you can interact with people, etc. I'll put in my two cents and say that all those things are true, but on the other hand surfing the web is an all-engaging experience. As opposed to the other things as you watch TV.
So I don't see why it is necessarily worse if I watch, in your words, third-grade jokes as I'm folding laundry, cleaning my room, eating dinner by myself, etc, as opposed to the incessant hours you apparently spend reading and posting to slashdot.
Free Mac Mini with Equal Opportunity
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Actually, I used to make the exact same comments about the exact same refrigerators until a (not so close) friend moved to Korea. Apparently the living space in the majority of apartments there is excruciatingly small, thus they learned to combine appliances to reduce wasted space.
Inevitably an international company is going to inject new products into a foreign market with the hope that the recipient country will be as receptive as the domestic market.
Here's something of interest, though:
https://adwords.google.com/select/tips.html
From the page here:
Use a strong call-to-action.
Example: "Register for membership now," "Save on DVDs," "Get cheap stereos," or "Join now for 20% discount."
I think what's going on here is that I'm targetting a different market (oh God, what have I become), than on Google adwords. Since it's an expected advertising environment, they want you to use strong "advertiser" words like that.
Here, since it's just a forum, people don't want stuff that's as blaring or strong.
Lesson learned. I do programming for a living, so I'm new to add this. Thanks for being patient :)
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
There actually are lots of people who have clicked.
I get more referrals from slashdot than I do from google adwords. I wouldn't have imaged that either.
But then, there are a lot of things that people order online that I wouldn't fathom.
For instance, I could never imagine buying jewelry online. There's a large market for it. I couldn't imagine buying flowers, or gift baskets. I couldn't imagine buying sunglasses. I'm one of those people who has to simply buy some things in person.
But yes, people actually do click the links on this site. Strange as that may be.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I disconnected cable long ago. I was tired of paying $50/mo for tripe.
TLC killed off all their worthwhile shows and turned into the "home improvement and biker channel".
Scifi channel turned into the "John edwards show".
Paramount pretty much permanently killed star trek with "Voyager" and "Enterprise".
FOX cancelled Futurama.
The rest? Well, I can get them in DVD box sets, an entire season at a time, with commentary and extras, without any commercials, and watch them whenever I want. It's a hell of a lot cheaper, too.
I recall reading somewhere that for the first time in history since the introduction of television, viewership is actually going down . It honestly wouldn't suprise me.
I think Slashdot signatures are actually an *exceptional* way to advertise geek-related things. What other way can you get advertising INLINE with the comments people are already reading? Additionally, people subconsciously trust "real humans" (as much as a Slashdotter can be considered a real human) more than faceless ads on webpages.
I know I myself signed up with my current hosting provider because I saw a link in someone's sig that looked like a great deal. Turned out to be a fantastic deal, I signed up, and that guy assuredly got a kickback.
I think people follow links in sigs because it's coming from an individual that's promoting something that actually means something to them instead of some corporation that's just trying to squeeze more cash from people. I completely ignore all web ads (text or otherwise), but I followed your sig.
I currently have 500 MB of space and 5 GB/month free for 3 years through 1and1, but I'll probably check your site out again when that expires.
When she's gone the TVs in the house are OFF. If she's gone for several days, the TV is OFF for all that time. When I'm in a room by myself, the TV is OFF. When we started living together six years ago, she had a TV going 24 hours a day including while we were sleeping. I finally convinced her that she could sleep if it was off and she told me the next day that she had not slept so well in years, I said, "DUH!".
I get my news from the Internet and I get it when I want it and in the degree of detail that I select. I don't want things predigested into a 30 second story and force fed to me. Entertainment on TV? Blech!! There's no entertainment worth watching on TV. "Reality" shows are NOT reality, they are garbage. The various series are uninspired nowadays, or maybe I'm just jaded, but what's the difference?
I don't know if there's much hope for TV, but given the braindead majority of the population, it'll probably go on like this for decades to come. I'm just glad those of us who are capable of thought have options like the Internet, books, live performances and lots of activities that don't involve TV.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
..ugh, ignore my last post, I pasted the wrong version...
... I think it's fairly contemptuous to pass judgment on someone for doing something they enjoy.
Reality TV is so prevalent because it's so cheap and easy to make.
I think another reason reality TV is so popular is because it's still somewhat of a new genre. I mean has the sitcom really changed much in the last 40 years? Is there much of a difference between I Love Lucy/The Brady Bunch/Friends?
I think people want to watch good TV (there isn't much of it) and they think since reality TV is new it must necessarily be good.
Though is there anything wrong with watching TV? Some people choose to watch reality shows (I recall an interview with Steven Spielberg who said he enjoyed Cops because it displayed human nature), some people choose to read those magazines displayed in the checkout line of the grocery store, some people choose to read slashdot
With the exception of Jeopardy! and the Daily Show, I haven't watch TV for the last two years. Am I better than someone who treats Survivor as a religion? Hardly. I just have different hobbies.
Exactly as I have heard, we are eyeballs:
n &b tnG=Google+Search
http://images.google.com/images?q=eyeballs&hl=e
(Just to make it clear)
Then the american version appeared. Louder, noisier, with inane hosts and manufactured "conflict" between the teams where there used to be good natured competition. Less and less science, more and more "garage cam". Builds where clever engineering was forgotten in favorite of getting the best planted junk.
Now, it is no more. Instead, I can watch decorating show marathons. Or not- I haven't turned on TLC in months.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Along those lines, it's also more convincing because it's a real person who is putting their personal credibility on the line on a board like this, as opposed to a blurb written by someone you'll never meet, much less be able to bark out should it be fake.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
I can't remember whose law it was, but whoever said it was certainly right here: you cannot measure something without changing the measurement. Of course it's easy to see how entrusting someone to keep a diary of what they've watched can be abused. The set-top people meter illustrates this: if my preferences were being recorded, of course I'd be much more discerning in what I watched. If I came home one evening and really wanted to switch my brain off and rest, without a people-meter box I might ... conceivably ... though of course this has never happened ... I might watch Survivor or Idol. But if this activity was directly supporting the creation of such crap I would make sure I NEVER watched it.
Same goes for the Portable Meter. If my perferences were being recorded, I would OF COURSE avoid commercial radio stations, Muzak I didn't like, and the myriad other things that I'd suddenly become aware of. I'd want to buck the system, baby. Everything I did would suddenly become a moral judgement: "If this little box detects that I'm doing this, then there'll be more of this in the world: Do I want that?"
And anyway, what type of person volunteers to wear a Portable People Meter? Is it someone extroverted enough to not mind having their lives analysed by advertising industry grunts? Is it someone idealistic enough to want to mess up these measurements? Is it the cunning and selfish person who is willing to sacrifice a little privacy in order to get more of the type of TV shows that they like? Are these normal people?
I submitted a "6month website status report" last week (because detailed webstats weren't wanted for some reason), and for all the thousands they've spent and will continue to spend on maintenance, the site only averages 12 unique visits per day (including SE bots)... and they're happy with this. *shrug*. The air up there...
Power to the Peaceful
I will reveal the dark secret of the 0-15 demographic.
Outside of brand and product awareness, most people over the age 25 are "statistically unaffected by advertising"*. Most people under the age of 16 are heavily influenced, with a significant decrease each year after, ending at the age of 25. This is not because "brand loyalty" is established by that age. "Brand loyalty" does not exist. "Brand laziness" does exist, but it is really the opposite of loyalty and is almost impossible to advertise for.
The 0-15 demographic is called the 18-24 demographic when speaking to the public for obvious reasons. This is the dirty secret of the industry: You are not targeted because it is so much easier to convince a seven year old of something than a 40 year old. The amount of money it would cost to convince you is more than the profit to be had.
On an end note: The 0 - 15 demographic was previously known as the 4 - 18 demographic. We all seem to be getting more sophisticated.
* "statistically unaffected by advertising" = cost to influence > profit
FOX news fearmongering! Nevermind 9/11, a few thousand people died and the economy got a short-term boost. How about the tens of thousands who starve to death every single day? How about the tens of thousands of CHILDREN who work in SWEATSHOPS getting paid like 8 cents to make that $100 shirt you're wearing?? How about hundreds of millions of tonnes of garbage produced every year by Americans? How about Monsanto's BGH being added to nearly all American milk, despite clear evidence that it causes lots of medical problems in the cows and leads to Americans consuming more bacteria and antibiotics through their milk?
This world is so fucked up, I can see why we all need television for fondling our minds. Its just easier to ignore all the shit that's really going on out there. But even if we're numb to it, all that shit is still happening. Maybe we should turn off our TVs and start trying to fix this world, a little bit at a time.
Thats 'set top box' for those not in the know. They paid me and my roommate 50 bucks for every six months we had it and handed us a remote. Everytime one of us turned on the TV, the person(s) were supposed to press a number on the remote. If there were any outsiders, they were to press yet another number. We kind of did it for about a week, after that we sort of _lost_ the remote. And its crap anyway. My roomie would leave CSPAN on all day and night on Saturday just to _quote_ fuck with the eggheads ... with MBA's _quote_. Since then I have met a two more people who had the STBs and did pretty much the same, although their sentiments regarding that were expressed differently.
And I still havent figured out how they can extrapolate from the miniscule (relatively speaking) slice of society that they listen in on (a large %age of whom would most probably behave like us). I am no expert in polling, but even assuming that they have a statistically relevant set of subjects as in a scientific poll, it still seems flaky at best. And yes I know that estimating properties/behaviors on a collection is far easier and more accurate than estimating properties of an individual entities. Its just that humans are not atomic particles who have to obey the laws of physics, and AFAIK group pschycology still has some way to go.
I do not doubt the fundamental correctness of their assumptions, algorithms and techniques, but somehow I have a feeling that someone quite like Karl Rove figured out that they could fleece a shitload of money off of PHBs in tv land by using fancy math/science words, which they knew the PHBs wouldnt understand (and probably wouldnt care about), while promising them the marketing dept's holy grail, did it, and are still getting away with it.
This is very very close to the mark. Other things to consider when looking at the drivel that "rates" is to look at when this stuff is aired.
Prime time usually coincides with the typical family dinner time and an hour or so afterwards, in otherwords when people plonk themselves in front of the tube and shovel down their evening meal. The next rating slot is set for after the kids go to bed and mom and pop veg on the couch.
Almost anything will rate in this timeslot. The trick is to have one or two good shows in that slot during the week, that way the mindless masses get into the habit of tuning in at a certain time of day to watch. Once the habit is set you can then air whatever the latest garbage some smack addled exec dreamt up.
One other thing of note is that you don't want something to rate too well, you want it to rate just above your competitor. This way you keep the price for advertising high without it going through the roof. If something rates too high, because the price for advertising is proportional to the ratings, it will often be pulled because the advertisers are no longer willing to pay.
This is often why shows that rate well will somtimes get bumped to later, non rating timeslots. It brings up the advertising revenue for these later slots while keeping prime time affordable.
"Look, Ma, I'm ON TV!"
And that's, I'm afraid, is the main reason why the programming will just go worse and worse. Because at any time there will be a guaranteed watchers base, if not for the sheer excitement over watching those poor dumbasses being abused in front of the camera, then for the chance that "ONE DAY I could be THERE too, Ma!"
The only trouble with novels (and I watch very little TV and would love to read more) is that for someone like me who can go through an average sized to large novel in one to two days, this quickly becomes an expensive proposition, especially when you aren't the sort of person who tends to re-read books (or re-watch movies, etc.). About the only books I've ever re-read are books with some sort of reference quality to them...maybe I'm strange, but I just don't get the same enjoyment out of a story once I've already experienced it once. The rare exception comes when its something I haven't read in a long time, or, especially in the case of a movie, something that's really funny / quotable (and thus fun w/ friends).
"Television is ... for forgetting that there are thousands of people somewhere in the world that want to kill you."
Geez, it's really true then, Americans are pathetically scared of everything.
Every time a US star doesn't want to go to Luxembourg or France or whatever because of fear for the Taliban, the world is laughing.
Let's say that given the state the world today is in, if your only concern is fear for your life in the most militarized police state/democracy in the world, you should consider watching TV to forget you're the laughing stock of the world.
Not an attack on the US or US citizens, but on a state of mind that's too stupid for words. Go outside your borders and find out what the rest of the world looks like. You might be pleasantly surprised and forget your ridiculous fear. Ye gods, do you see the Irish or Spanish cowering in front of their TV set?
There's a whole lot more to be scared about than ONE attack in a couple of hundred years with less than two thousand dead as a result - all horrible and sad, but gods, compare with the rest of the world and be happy, or go out and fight in Bush's proud army and make others fear you, either way, get over it.
OK, I'm starting to flame here, but instead of deleting this, I'll just risk my precious karma in the hopes that you'll get angry and after that think about this fear thing a bit more open minded.
The world is not out to Kill Americans. Not more than it's out to Kill Frenchies, Blacks, Whites, Christians, Arabs, whatevers!!!! There's always a crazy person when you don't need one.
And compared to a lot of places, the US is a haven of freedom and opportunity to make something of your life. Maybe not my favourite country, but who cares? You? Don't. Fear, my friend is a lousy companion.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
In the case of reality tv, and the virus of staged court tv, it comes down to cost. When profits are at stake, would a network rather have an expensive show suceed, even that expensive show would attract more viewers, or a show that cost half as much but attract 20% less viewers. Also in the equation, to the staged court tv advantage, is the fact the reality tv cannot be syndicated to generate additional profits.
A few producers still try to create interesting TV. The problem is that with the costs of sets, competant actors, reasonable writers, and simply trying to do a good job directing, the costs are too high. A network does a much better job giving stockholder value with Law and Order than with a traditional TV show. And since so much in entertainment is a matter of promotion, all they need to do is not promote the more expensive shows. That way they can claim that no one wants anything but reality, or psuedo reality, tv.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Thanks... between this explanation and another reply posting, I understand your point a lot better.
I'm still trying to figure out how this is a bad deal in terms of who pays what to whom. The people who watch 1 hour of commercials in return for 4 hours of programming at least find this to be an acceptable trade. The people who pay broadcasters $1.20 per viewer-hour find this acceptable too. Whatever the differential is, this is the profit of the broadcasters. And it's not like they exerted no effort / spent no money to occupy this middleman position. It seems like a pretty standard business arrangement to me.
This is not to suggest that I'm a fan of the great gratis spectrum giveaway and the legal apparatus that perpetuates it in an age when it no longer makes any sense to, from a public interest point of view.
Obviously we're now in an age where disintermediation of the broadcasting middleman is practical and sensical to perform. It should be done. Production facilities are likely to get a better deal, and viewers (who now rightfully would be the paying consumers of the production) will certainly get more of what they want and at better prices, too. And I won't loose any more sleep for the passing of the broadcasting industry than I would for those who depend on another business model that fails in the face of technological innovation.
Cheers,
Richard