Seinfeld was given an starting order of only four episodes in order to hold Jerry under contract so he couldn't start a competitor to The Tonight Show and still be in the running for the job that eventually went to Jay Leno. NBC was going to burn them off... then they hit it big and the rest is history.
King of the Hill dodged that problem in the first season by not premiering until football season was over, and Fox not starting the new seasons until football season was half-over to give the show a fighting chance. Also, it turned out to be a much better show to absorb the football audience, at some points even passing The Simpsons in the ratings.
TiVo had this as part of their business model since Day One. They log every action you take with the box, and even IR signals not meant for it so they can tell if you muted the TV. They then summarize that data to make their recommendation-engine system, but offer randomly selected atomic per-user reporting to the TV types if they're willing to pay for it. This can also be used to dispute small-audience ratings if there are more TiVos watching than the estimated total of everybody watching, that's proof something's amiss.
TiVo even has a function for the studio crew of live shows to tell if their execs are watching live or timeshifting or not even looking.
And the killer thing is that there's a secret way to "customize" a show so that, for example, Paris Hilton can see a recycled Lindsay Lohan joke in her Chicks, Man segment of The Soup instead of Joel McHale telling the latest Paris Hilton joke to her face.
I seriously doubt that anybody who watched the early 90s episodes is still watching today. It's a target audience that you grow into and then out of... but the show's still going because for every person that grows out of watching, there's another kid who starts watching. Remember, today's 18 year old wasn't even alive when The Simpsons first aired.
That's where it started, but got kicked because the post-Simpsons slot had already been promised to Malcom in the Middle. Therefore, the Matt hour was supposed to be 7:30-8:30... but 7:30pm was the slot 'o death as described earlier.
That's only the case with the Super Bowl and conference championship games where they're required to visit the winning locker room to show off the logo clothing that will be on sale in the morning all over the team's area. Most post-game shows have been banished to cable networks where it's sports talk pre-empting talk of other sports....
The famed "ratings diaries" no longer exist. If you're handed one, it's fake. They now simply just monitor the TV for what channel it's tuned to, and use Kinect-like cameras to determine who's in the room.
Arrested Development had too many big-name stars, and therefore a bloated budget. It was popular, but not popular enough to justify its production costs. Remember, the object of the TV game is to make money, not keep fans happy.
Family Guy was also on the Sunday post-NFL schedule and not given right-of-way over The Simpsons, and therefore also killed by the same factors that did in Futurama.
It's a 20th Century Fox production now for Viacom's Comedy Central... so international rights belong to Fox, which most likely means this would go to Global when they get around to it.
This was a show that found its audience after Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block picked it up and the DVD sales shot through the roof. People who had seen an episode or two but didn't know where to see another saw the series played in its entirety there. (And btw... I have some inside info that a well-placed showing of a certain episode and having it be quoted to the right CBS execs led to the planning of soap cancellations now going and that "Game shows are back!")
Firefly was also the victim of bad scheduling on Fox's part... local stations were allowed to show local MLB coverage on Fridays, and that led to new episodes airing at 1:43am or such after the game's conclusion and a delayed late local newscast.
The reason why Fox ruined the original airings of Futurama was because they slotted it at 7:30pm on Sundays... a time slot that got murdered by NFL runovers in the Eastern and Central time zones. Fans couldn't reliably tune in because they didn't know if the episode would air, if the episode would be joined in progress, or if the entire airing would be deleted by an overtime NFL game. Fox's policy of running Sunday primetime as soon as possible... either at 7pm sharp if there was no NFL game, or as soon as it concluded if there was one, made whether Futurama's slot would air and when dependent on which NFL game your city saw that afternoon.
What a mess... since getting the NFL, Fox never had a successful Sunday 7pm hour. A few years after repeated throwing good shows into a bad time slot, they finally got the clue. Fox Sports now produces a postgame show called The OT (a play-on-words based on The OC, which this show has outlasted) that is joined like the halftime show as each game concludes, and can show bonus coverage of games still going to stations that get stuck with an early finish, and always ends at 8pm ET sharp. Thanks for watching Fox NFL Sunday, The Simpsons is next.
It's their computers and their networks, so they can do whatever they want. Still, if you deny Google the right to encrypt on your network, Google still has the right to deny you any or all of their services. Teachers like to call that "natural consequences...
H&R Block's mainframe system has computed that all of the the offers on Deal or No Deal are bunk, you're always statistically better off sticking with your case through most of the game... but they're still unsure whether you should take Howie's offer to switch your case with the last one left in the hands of the models.
A tragedy as the Stanford-built computer made to play Russian Roulette was caught not in the lead when time was called in the second round, and was dropped by the random must-drop-somebody spin. It suffered the series first fatal injury as the fall broke it's hard disk. It will not be rebult.
Amazon.com's entry onto The Price is Right was disqualified from the Human-vs.-Machine Day event after it was learned that it was powered by Mechanical Turk.
Priceline.com's robot blundered today by deciding to keep the trip to Spain when it declined to play the Big Deal, and had to watch a woman dressed as Clown get the new Chevy Volt on today's Let's Make of the Deal.
Because, like Deep Blue at its time, it requires much more computing power than today's typical web site or PC. Chess has finally been solved to the point that there's now unbeatable AIs available to the average user (assuming it gets to move first) but Jeopardy! hasn't, which is why this is novel. It'll take several more years of computing power increases before we'll be playing this AI on our home video game systems.
and see students from the MIT Robotics Lab test their machine that they say can avoid the Bankrupts and find that Million Dollar wedge on the Wheel of Fortune!
Part of the deal with Jeopardy! is that they will have as part of the 2010-2011 season be a televised episode in which record-breaking champ Ken Jennings will play against Watson, with a to-be-named-later champion in the third slot. This has been in the works since 2009, but the staff of the show finally thinks the system is ready for it's televised match.
One key factor is how the human behavior will change when prize money is at stake. Jennings has proven in numerous appearances on GSN that he's willing to play in any test of knowledge and the fact that he knew he was Jeopardy's first millionaire in regular season play didn't stop his long Jeopardy! run. He also studied for the show, particularly alcoholic beverages (which he doesn't drink) because he had seen the Potent Potables category on TV.
But, what about that player-to-be-named later? Will they know more than the grad students... and play the game not as if it's for points but real dollars?
Here's the way this plays out. I find out what you're into by the Facebook/Myspace APIs, then match tha up with what you might want to buy with the store's API... and suddenly every ad on my website is targeted to specific items at the store. Profit!
You might want to look at the "CNET How-To" and "CNET Hacks" HD video podcasts... Hacks even goes into things the companies don't want known, like iPhone jailbreaks.
Slashdot Mirror
Bender goes into his "drunk" mode when he isn't drinking enough... it's part of the running gag.
Seinfeld was given an starting order of only four episodes in order to hold Jerry under contract so he couldn't start a competitor to The Tonight Show and still be in the running for the job that eventually went to Jay Leno. NBC was going to burn them off... then they hit it big and the rest is history.
King of the Hill dodged that problem in the first season by not premiering until football season was over, and Fox not starting the new seasons until football season was half-over to give the show a fighting chance. Also, it turned out to be a much better show to absorb the football audience, at some points even passing The Simpsons in the ratings.
TiVo had this as part of their business model since Day One. They log every action you take with the box, and even IR signals not meant for it so they can tell if you muted the TV. They then summarize that data to make their recommendation-engine system, but offer randomly selected atomic per-user reporting to the TV types if they're willing to pay for it. This can also be used to dispute small-audience ratings if there are more TiVos watching than the estimated total of everybody watching, that's proof something's amiss.
TiVo even has a function for the studio crew of live shows to tell if their execs are watching live or timeshifting or not even looking.
And the killer thing is that there's a secret way to "customize" a show so that, for example, Paris Hilton can see a recycled Lindsay Lohan joke in her Chicks, Man segment of The Soup instead of Joel McHale telling the latest Paris Hilton joke to her face.
I seriously doubt that anybody who watched the early 90s episodes is still watching today. It's a target audience that you grow into and then out of... but the show's still going because for every person that grows out of watching, there's another kid who starts watching. Remember, today's 18 year old wasn't even alive when The Simpsons first aired.
That's where it started, but got kicked because the post-Simpsons slot had already been promised to Malcom in the Middle. Therefore, the Matt hour was supposed to be 7:30-8:30... but 7:30pm was the slot 'o death as described earlier.
That's only the case with the Super Bowl and conference championship games where they're required to visit the winning locker room to show off the logo clothing that will be on sale in the morning all over the team's area. Most post-game shows have been banished to cable networks where it's sports talk pre-empting talk of other sports....
The famed "ratings diaries" no longer exist. If you're handed one, it's fake. They now simply just monitor the TV for what channel it's tuned to, and use Kinect-like cameras to determine who's in the room.
Arrested Development had too many big-name stars, and therefore a bloated budget. It was popular, but not popular enough to justify its production costs. Remember, the object of the TV game is to make money, not keep fans happy.
Family Guy was also on the Sunday post-NFL schedule and not given right-of-way over The Simpsons, and therefore also killed by the same factors that did in Futurama.
It's a 20th Century Fox production now for Viacom's Comedy Central... so international rights belong to Fox, which most likely means this would go to Global when they get around to it.
This was a show that found its audience after Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block picked it up and the DVD sales shot through the roof. People who had seen an episode or two but didn't know where to see another saw the series played in its entirety there. (And btw... I have some inside info that a well-placed showing of a certain episode and having it be quoted to the right CBS execs led to the planning of soap cancellations now going and that "Game shows are back!")
Firefly was also the victim of bad scheduling on Fox's part... local stations were allowed to show local MLB coverage on Fridays, and that led to new episodes airing at 1:43am or such after the game's conclusion and a delayed late local newscast.
The reason why Fox ruined the original airings of Futurama was because they slotted it at 7:30pm on Sundays... a time slot that got murdered by NFL runovers in the Eastern and Central time zones. Fans couldn't reliably tune in because they didn't know if the episode would air, if the episode would be joined in progress, or if the entire airing would be deleted by an overtime NFL game. Fox's policy of running Sunday primetime as soon as possible... either at 7pm sharp if there was no NFL game, or as soon as it concluded if there was one, made whether Futurama's slot would air and when dependent on which NFL game your city saw that afternoon.
What a mess... since getting the NFL, Fox never had a successful Sunday 7pm hour. A few years after repeated throwing good shows into a bad time slot, they finally got the clue. Fox Sports now produces a postgame show called The OT (a play-on-words based on The OC, which this show has outlasted) that is joined like the halftime show as each game concludes, and can show bonus coverage of games still going to stations that get stuck with an early finish, and always ends at 8pm ET sharp. Thanks for watching Fox NFL Sunday, The Simpsons is next.
Don't forget to set your DVR's for the new episodes starting tomorrow...
It's their computers and their networks, so they can do whatever they want. Still, if you deny Google the right to encrypt on your network, Google still has the right to deny you any or all of their services. Teachers like to call that "natural consequences...
Does it become 84 if it's behind the Daily Double?
{buzzes in}
What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?
Was this bird affected by the BP oil spill or not?
Elsewhere on the TV dial...
H&R Block's mainframe system has computed that all of the the offers on Deal or No Deal are bunk, you're always statistically better off sticking with your case through most of the game... but they're still unsure whether you should take Howie's offer to switch your case with the last one left in the hands of the models.
A tragedy as the Stanford-built computer made to play Russian Roulette was caught not in the lead when time was called in the second round, and was dropped by the random must-drop-somebody spin. It suffered the series first fatal injury as the fall broke it's hard disk. It will not be rebult.
Amazon.com's entry onto The Price is Right was disqualified from the Human-vs.-Machine Day event after it was learned that it was powered by Mechanical Turk.
Priceline.com's robot blundered today by deciding to keep the trip to Spain when it declined to play the Big Deal, and had to watch a woman dressed as Clown get the new Chevy Volt on today's Let's Make of the Deal.
Why can't I ask it my own questions?
Because, like Deep Blue at its time, it requires much more computing power than today's typical web site or PC. Chess has finally been solved to the point that there's now unbeatable AIs available to the average user (assuming it gets to move first) but Jeopardy! hasn't, which is why this is novel. It'll take several more years of computing power increases before we'll be playing this AI on our home video game systems.
and see students from the MIT Robotics Lab test their machine that they say can avoid the Bankrupts and find that Million Dollar wedge on the Wheel of Fortune!
Part of the deal with Jeopardy! is that they will have as part of the 2010-2011 season be a televised episode in which record-breaking champ Ken Jennings will play against Watson, with a to-be-named-later champion in the third slot. This has been in the works since 2009, but the staff of the show finally thinks the system is ready for it's televised match.
One key factor is how the human behavior will change when prize money is at stake. Jennings has proven in numerous appearances on GSN that he's willing to play in any test of knowledge and the fact that he knew he was Jeopardy's first millionaire in regular season play didn't stop his long Jeopardy! run. He also studied for the show, particularly alcoholic beverages (which he doesn't drink) because he had seen the Potent Potables category on TV.
But, what about that player-to-be-named later? Will they know more than the grad students... and play the game not as if it's for points but real dollars?
Here's the way this plays out. I find out what you're into by the Facebook/Myspace APIs, then match tha up with what you might want to buy with the store's API... and suddenly every ad on my website is targeted to specific items at the store. Profit!
You might want to look at the "CNET How-To" and "CNET Hacks" HD video podcasts... Hacks even goes into things the companies don't want known, like iPhone jailbreaks.
With the computer magazines still in business converting into websites, why not go to the tech centric websites such as CNET?