Re:Radio stations that need this are poor.
on
"Not a Mini-Spy"
·
· Score: 1
Many people in radio and television don't really care about how accurate the ratings are any more. Most of the interest is not from the sales department, but from the talent (meaning DJs) who need to make sure they still matter in the world. Sure, it is easier to make a sale if you are pushing the number 1 station, but for the most part, stations manage to boil down the ratings books to the point that they can say they are #1 for some obsecure demographic (everyone who lives at 324 Main St thinks we're the best!).
Ratings do play a part in setting the prices for national agencies' buys, but that isn't any sort of exact science.
no longer the exclusive domain of middle aged white guys
Around here, that's true. Most of the operators are retired white guys. Ham Radio -a bunch of old men who can't hear trying to program a radio with a display they can't see!
Re:Probably not going to happen
on
Mario's Revenge?
·
· Score: 1
Yes, and Sony loses money on every consumer who does this. They sell the console below cost as a loss leader and recoup the losses on licensing fees.
Actually, they don't loose money, since Sony Pictures makes movies. Welcome to the new world of OMNICORP.
[Fact] According to Frank Tower, NorthNet managing director, Verizon "suggested" that ISPs secure OC-3 connectivity because the ILEC knew few ISPs would be able to afford that large of a pipe, which comes with an equally hefty price tag. In effect, Verizon is attempting to run independent ISPs and CLECs out of the DSL marketplace.
Well, I would think that an OC-3 will allow for future growth. Unless they only want a few hundred customers (thus never making the payback on their DSLAM, rent, etc), or provide lousy service to their customers (oversubscription on a "trunk" line is a terrible thing), they should be putting in a DS-3 at a minimum. I'm sure Verizon wanted them to install an OC-x to allow for growth without having to go back every 6 months.
The problem with all the deregulation in the telecom act of 1996 is that it was sold to the American people as a way for grassroots orgs to create and run telephone and cable systems. The reality was that groups of companies wanted to resell phone service (not actually run new lines), and the major telecoms wanted long distance. No one really expected a bunch of "regular folks" to run a phone system (grassroots), but that was the image many people in congress had when they signed the bill. Of course, CLEC equipment still costs money, renting lines still costs money, and since you are running with 0 customers (and the ILEC has 96% of your potential customer base), you better be ready to loose money for years, perhaps decades.
The only real threat to ILECS at this time are cell phones. Cable companies (if they can get their s*** together and get through the mess AT&T made of subscriber valuations) have the best chances of anyone of really putting an end to the ILEC stranglehold. They just have to get their reliability problems under control, but that's easy.
You're correct in saying that broadcasters need more eyeballs on their programming but let's not forget why these whores want the eyeballs....ADVERTISING.
Well, duh.
Not wanting to belittle your comment, but did you ever think that one of the reasons we see so many commericals is on the off chance that you may forget to fast forward through them? How about the fact that while channel flipping you see the same spots on all the channel?
The programs cost them money to produce or buy the rights to air. They want programs that will get more people watching so their commercials are seen by more people.
Did you ever think that this could just be something "they" threw out just to get a reaction? Why would ANYONE want something that is transmitted over the airwaves to not be viewable? The broadcast business model depends on having as many eyeballs out there watching your program instead of your competitor's program. I really doubt that the broadcast world would record inhibit their broadcasts. They just managed to convince the FCC that they need it.
Pay Per View is not a useful model for making much money. It allows for incremental revenue to an already released product, porn and other *quality* programming, but I doubt that anyone is seriously thinking that PPV will be a long term moneymaker for broadcasters.
BTW: In case you haven't heard, the FCC has been sold to the highest bidder.
they are a huge, widely distributed "company" that has long since passed the point where you could actually look at it as one singular entity.
This is completely wrong. Sony is one of the most integrated modern companies out there. The management is very centralized, and it is easy for them to turn on a dime. Just look at the memory stick. Every product that Sony has introduced in the past year that may have a chance of using the memory stick has the memory stick. You don't get that level of integration overnight without an entire company marching in the same direction.
I didn't plan on adding to the commentary, but I just have to correct a few things here:
1) No one is painting on film. They did at one time, and some really cheap filmmakers (like something on MST3K) used to scratch the film to make lightning and other effects, but the guys at Skywalker ranch use a device called an Optical printer. This makes it possible to take various layers of film and create a complete picture (the 5 layers of Luke learning the force, for example) using photographic techniques. The tough part of this is getting the lighting right and making mistakes. Much easier to get things right when you get a WYSIWYG display of your shots.
2)The high cost of film is not the high cost of film, but the chance of making a mistake. Most productions over the past 10 years have used a video tap - a device that sits on the viewfinder and sends the output to a VCR/monitor to help directors see the shot, but you don't get a very good idea of what you are shooing and this can lead to second guessing your (or your DP's) eye. With digital cameras, you can see what the camera sees without any doubt
The only real complaint I have about using digital video cameras to shoot is that it is not the *best* quality available right now. If I were shooting a feature film, I would want to use the highest quality source available that fit the budget. I'm guessing that for all practical purposes, Lucas has an unlimited budget. Flying spot scanners have been better than most video cameras for some time, and there is no reason to assume that this is no longer the case.
Back in the late 80's, the FCC began to relax most of the TV ownership rules. Most of the rest of the world's governments (at least in the first world) began to do the same thing. This led to massive consolidation of television, at first across multiple markets, and finally, in the same markets (chances are, most of the radio stations in your area, if you live in the US, are owned by Clear Channel Communications or that other one). This leads to "corporate" content. No one really wants to take much risk. It is much easier to predict revenue (budget) if you already know that year over year changes are going to be minimal, and you aren't going to upset anyone.
The really scary part is that the big media companies, like NBC and ABC (in the US) are owned by even bigger companies. When was the last time you saw any negitive (or any other) story about GE on NBC? You didn't. In fact, the only time I've ever seen any aknowledgement of GE's ownership of NBC was years ago on Letterman, when he tried to visit GE's home office.
Another bad thing about consentration of ownership is that there is little insentive to have localized content made available. In the US, if you watch your local newscast with a stopwatch, you will find that only about 5 minutes of the newscast is actually devoted to local news (this is not counting sports and weather, which aren't really hard journalism, and are mostly there to get ratings. After all, everyone is effected by the weather). Same thing is true in the newspaper (the web versions of most newspapers make this very clear). Even most of the editorial pages are just national columns. This is known in the corporate takeover world as synergy, and is a very distrubing trend.
Now, everyone knows that owning a TV license is a license to print money, so stations are bought and sold all the time, mostly on VC. Except that now we have media saturation in Cable and independent stations (and Blockbuster), and now we see that there's been a clear decline in viewship over the past 10 years.
How are you going to get your message out in this world? Two ways make sense: Attempt to be like Wal-Mart or McDonalds, that is, not the best, but not offensive either. Bland, predictable, expected. The other method is to be so over the top that you get a major reaction (if it bleeds it leads). This was the first method - the Action News theory - that worked well in the early 80's and led to a real decline in the inner city (white folks wouldn't go there since there' so much crime, gangs got attention and even praise (gangsta rap!) from "The Media" and the money went away). However, you can only shock people for so long before they get used to it. Jerry Springer is a good example of this. The first time you see it, you think "my god, this is like when Rome fell." Then you get into it. Later, you start to pity the people who actually think this show is good, and finally, you are ready for the next shocker, but the media can't seem to keep up.
The thing that is much harder is to be bland without appearing to be marketing. It is getting better all the time, and I think one of the defining moments in marketing is this year's Presidential "election." I'm still trying to figure out if there's any difference at all between these two. It is like the parties decided to hold a bunch of focus groups to define the party platform. No mention of hot buttons, such as killin' or stealin' (or smokin' and drinkin'), since that won't play well with the folks back home. If there was any real journalism in this election, it never made it out of the newsroom (and Matt Drudge is not real journalism, BTW).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that:
1) yes, this guy is right. Journalism is in very poor shape right now.
2)the fix is not going to happen with the current group of journalists, who are part of the problem.
3) The Internet will make it possible to make journalism a hobby, much like open source software has made it (in theory) a hobby to write software in your spare time.
That's basically what it will become. If it is spun off to a VC firm, the engineers will need to produce products, not ideas. That will surely mark the end of PARC as the R&D center of the valley.
If they do get sucked up by a real company that needs them to produce products, it will be gone in 3 to 5 years.
I got the impression that they were going to have some sort of master/slave system for moving the data around. The system gets a request from a ground station for position, plane transmits, ground station updates the rest of the planes in the area. I think that would explain the 150 mile range.
However, you make a good point... If this is going to be a real time system, it will need to receive, process, and transmit the data very, very quickly. In a busy flight center like NYC or Atlanta, things could get overloaded in a hurry. Also, I'd like to see how they handle a new plane arriving in the airspace. They'd have to have some sort of announcement window that would allow new planes to enter the system and a good way to deal with planes that drop off (when to stop tracking).
Of course, if this is just a peer-peer system, the chances for saturation are very, very high.
Also, as far a powerful transmitters, remember that airplanes have a major advantage over ground based transmitters: height. Generally, you can communicate over very long distances with very low power, only because you are 10,000 feet above the earth.
I never said I was the best person in the office at doing my report's jobs. Only that I can, and I often pitch in to help.
Someone below makes the point that it can't be expected that the CEO knows how to do every job under him. Sure, I agree with that, but he had damn well better know how to do the job of everone who directly reports to him, and be expected to help out from time to time as well.
Also, from a lower level manager standpoint, how the heck are you going to review someone if you don't know what they do, can't possibly do it yourself, and have no plans to learn how to do it? KLOCS?
I've been in technical management for 6 years now, and I have come to the conclusion that any manager worth anything should be ready, willing, and able to to any of the jobs of the people he manages. In fact, if that person has held all those positions in the past, so much the better. I know I am a far more effective manager than some others, mostly due to the fact that I regulary help out with getting the work done. Yes, it makes for really long hours, since I usually end up doing my work and helping out, but I have first hand experience with the work, and can better handle compaints, etc.
The worst managers out there don't bother to get their hands dirty, or haven't been out of their office in 10 years, etc. I've noticed this type of manager is usually the one who golfs every Friday, uses every corpspeak buzzword out there, and generally has no clue as to how things work.
Lucky for the rest of us, most of them are going away these days, what with consolidation and all...
Actually, most wireless devices will transmit over a greater distance than recomended. However, most of the time the receivers are so lousy that they can only rate the things for a few meters. For someone with a decent receiver and an antenna with some gain, pulling out signals over great distances is no big deal.
Actually, I've noticed that the even numbered Intel chips are not the greatest (starting with the '286). Sure, the 486 was an OK chip compared to the 386, but it didn't last very long (and took forever to get into the marketplace). The Pentium was just fantastic, P-II just OK, P-III really cool (broke the 1GHz barrier - even if AMD did it first), and now the P-IV. Big, hot, painful to own.
Star Trek movies worked the same way, the odd numbered ones sucked.
Don't forget that the margins on the latest and greatest processor most likely aren't all that great until the R&D is paid for. But, the chipset? Different story. At the chipset level of technology, just about all the R&D has been paid for, so your manufacturing costs are not much more than sand (keeping in mind that they are made on the older lines, which have all been paid for when the 286 was the latest and greatest). Can anyone say "profit margin?"
What are the barriers to entry to the cable industry?
Disclaimer: I work for a cable company. This comment does not represent the ideas of my employer.
There really aren't any barriers per say, and many communities have more than one cable company (the one I live in, for example). Most of them are servicing apartment buildings, setting up bulk agreements with the building managers/owners. Sometimes they are good, sometimes not so good. If they are good, and can reach a profitability stage, they can begin to expand to normal residential service. But, there is a very high price to setting up a broadband cable network (or a CLEC, or whatever). That is one reason that wireless is a big deal right now. Wall street is seeing how much it costs to upgrade wired networks and doesn't want to foot the bill. So, the investors are convincing the government that it makes much more sense to sell wireless spectrum to the highest bidder. This has the effect of taking out the small players (auctions are very expensive), lets the feds pay off the debt (theoritically - one of the big reasons the budget will "ballence" is becuase of projected revenue from spectrum auctions), and takes money out of local communities - that franchise fee you pay on your cable bill every month.
With cable, all data must pass through the ring before reaching the first hop. The bandwidth in the ring is shared by everyone, so if 100 users are simultaneous downloading at equal speed on a 1.5Mbit link, each of them get 15Kbits of bandwidth.
OK, here we go again.
Yes, cable requires all users in a node to share the same bandwidth. Fine. All those users are sharing a 30Mbps link on the downstream (to user), assuming a 16QAM signal. It is somewhat higher if the cable system is using a 256QAM downstream carrier, which no one is right now due to carrier to noise issues. They are sharing a 10Mbps upstream signal, assuming a burst QPSK signal on the upstream (the other option in most cases is 16QAM, which again, is not used due to c/n issues).
1.5Mbps over a cable system would be very, very inefficient and I seriously doubt that any cable company would be interested in such a system.
As far as DSL being technologically superior, guess what? DSL uses 16QAM and QPSK as well. The signal runs over your pair to a DSLAM (not sure what it stands for) where it is combined with other's signals. From there it travels over the telco's ATM switch to your ISP.
Also, your calculations are off. There is no truly reliable way to figure out bandwidth over a packet switched network. That is one major problem with VoIP, QOS schemes either don't work under major loads, or haven't been developed to the point they need to be for lifeline service. Figure somewhere about 60-80% utilization of the available bandwith before normal users begin to notice, provided there are no other issues, such as a slow router, noise, etc.
Most of the time, the networks and agencies don't really care about ratings. They became a form of currency a long time ago, and don't reflect the true value of a program. For example, Friends was quite popular for a while, but I couldn't find anyone who regularly watched it. While it is true I didn't get a good sample of people, for the most part, I was talking with people who are "targeted" by that program. I'm sure we all have similar stories about other shows. However, Friends made a lot of money for NBC over the years, if only due to Jennifer Anniston being on the cover of People every week. Since there was a "buzz" over the program, NBC could charge a premium over the rating - which was so wrong it is laughable anyway - just because advertisers recognized the name of the show.
That's also what keeps the Tonight Show and Letterman on the air. The reality is that Nightline normally blows them out of the water on ratings, but generally doesn't get the same advertising revenue.
Another example of how terrible the current ratings system is: Touched by an Angel. While this group may not watch it, it is one of the most popular programs on the air. CBS almost canceled it due to low ratings, but kept it on after a MASSIVE viewer response (one of the biggest ever).
The thing is, you can make distribution and reediting of this stuff practically free, but production of content will still remain (relatively) costly. If every show looked like South Park, then anybody with a decent computer could put out their own, but most shows require a set, actors, costumes, cameras, crew, etc., etc.
There are some interesting things going on in the high end graphics world. It is now possible to get a box from SGI that can make a virtual set. The talent (actors) just walk around a bluescreen set and computer takes care of the rest. You can even move the camera and the set will move in response, keeping the set looking real. I have seen examples of this, and you really can't tell (as long as the lighting on the talent doesn't give it away).
I can see the day when the next generation playstation or Sega box will be able to create photorealistic images from nothing. Just have a bucket of pre-defined actors ready to go, set them in a world, and give them something to say.
I think the only thing holding the concept back is believable voice synthesis.
Slashdot Mirror
Ratings do play a part in setting the prices for national agencies' buys, but that isn't any sort of exact science.
Around here, that's true. Most of the operators are retired white guys. Ham Radio -a bunch of old men who can't hear trying to program a radio with a display they can't see!
Actually, they don't loose money, since Sony Pictures makes movies. Welcome to the new world of OMNICORP.
Well, I would think that an OC-3 will allow for future growth. Unless they only want a few hundred customers (thus never making the payback on their DSLAM, rent, etc), or provide lousy service to their customers (oversubscription on a "trunk" line is a terrible thing), they should be putting in a DS-3 at a minimum. I'm sure Verizon wanted them to install an OC-x to allow for growth without having to go back every 6 months.
The problem with all the deregulation in the telecom act of 1996 is that it was sold to the American people as a way for grassroots orgs to create and run telephone and cable systems. The reality was that groups of companies wanted to resell phone service (not actually run new lines), and the major telecoms wanted long distance. No one really expected a bunch of "regular folks" to run a phone system (grassroots), but that was the image many people in congress had when they signed the bill. Of course, CLEC equipment still costs money, renting lines still costs money, and since you are running with 0 customers (and the ILEC has 96% of your potential customer base), you better be ready to loose money for years, perhaps decades.
The only real threat to ILECS at this time are cell phones. Cable companies (if they can get their s*** together and get through the mess AT&T made of subscriber valuations) have the best chances of anyone of really putting an end to the ILEC stranglehold. They just have to get their reliability problems under control, but that's easy.
Western PA is about the same...
Well, duh.
Not wanting to belittle your comment, but did you ever think that one of the reasons we see so many commericals is on the off chance that you may forget to fast forward through them? How about the fact that while channel flipping you see the same spots on all the channel?
The programs cost them money to produce or buy the rights to air. They want programs that will get more people watching so their commercials are seen by more people.
So you are in favor of pay per view?
Pay Per View is not a useful model for making much money. It allows for incremental revenue to an already released product, porn and other *quality* programming, but I doubt that anyone is seriously thinking that PPV will be a long term moneymaker for broadcasters.
BTW: In case you haven't heard, the FCC has been sold to the highest bidder.
This is completely wrong. Sony is one of the most integrated modern companies out there. The management is very centralized, and it is easy for them to turn on a dime. Just look at the memory stick. Every product that Sony has introduced in the past year that may have a chance of using the memory stick has the memory stick. You don't get that level of integration overnight without an entire company marching in the same direction.
"Keyboard Error - Press F1 to continue."
And they say geeks don't have a sense of humor...
1) No one is painting on film. They did at one time, and some really cheap filmmakers (like something on MST3K) used to scratch the film to make lightning and other effects, but the guys at Skywalker ranch use a device called an Optical printer. This makes it possible to take various layers of film and create a complete picture (the 5 layers of Luke learning the force, for example) using photographic techniques. The tough part of this is getting the lighting right and making mistakes. Much easier to get things right when you get a WYSIWYG display of your shots.
2)The high cost of film is not the high cost of film, but the chance of making a mistake. Most productions over the past 10 years have used a video tap - a device that sits on the viewfinder and sends the output to a VCR/monitor to help directors see the shot, but you don't get a very good idea of what you are shooing and this can lead to second guessing your (or your DP's) eye. With digital cameras, you can see what the camera sees without any doubt
The only real complaint I have about using digital video cameras to shoot is that it is not the *best* quality available right now. If I were shooting a feature film, I would want to use the highest quality source available that fit the budget. I'm guessing that for all practical purposes, Lucas has an unlimited budget. Flying spot scanners have been better than most video cameras for some time, and there is no reason to assume that this is no longer the case.
The really scary part is that the big media companies, like NBC and ABC (in the US) are owned by even bigger companies. When was the last time you saw any negitive (or any other) story about GE on NBC? You didn't. In fact, the only time I've ever seen any aknowledgement of GE's ownership of NBC was years ago on Letterman, when he tried to visit GE's home office.
Another bad thing about consentration of ownership is that there is little insentive to have localized content made available. In the US, if you watch your local newscast with a stopwatch, you will find that only about 5 minutes of the newscast is actually devoted to local news (this is not counting sports and weather, which aren't really hard journalism, and are mostly there to get ratings. After all, everyone is effected by the weather). Same thing is true in the newspaper (the web versions of most newspapers make this very clear). Even most of the editorial pages are just national columns. This is known in the corporate takeover world as synergy, and is a very distrubing trend.
Now, everyone knows that owning a TV license is a license to print money, so stations are bought and sold all the time, mostly on VC. Except that now we have media saturation in Cable and independent stations (and Blockbuster), and now we see that there's been a clear decline in viewship over the past 10 years.
How are you going to get your message out in this world? Two ways make sense: Attempt to be like Wal-Mart or McDonalds, that is, not the best, but not offensive either. Bland, predictable, expected. The other method is to be so over the top that you get a major reaction (if it bleeds it leads). This was the first method - the Action News theory - that worked well in the early 80's and led to a real decline in the inner city (white folks wouldn't go there since there' so much crime, gangs got attention and even praise (gangsta rap!) from "The Media" and the money went away). However, you can only shock people for so long before they get used to it. Jerry Springer is a good example of this. The first time you see it, you think "my god, this is like when Rome fell." Then you get into it. Later, you start to pity the people who actually think this show is good, and finally, you are ready for the next shocker, but the media can't seem to keep up.
The thing that is much harder is to be bland without appearing to be marketing. It is getting better all the time, and I think one of the defining moments in marketing is this year's Presidential "election." I'm still trying to figure out if there's any difference at all between these two. It is like the parties decided to hold a bunch of focus groups to define the party platform. No mention of hot buttons, such as killin' or stealin' (or smokin' and drinkin'), since that won't play well with the folks back home. If there was any real journalism in this election, it never made it out of the newsroom (and Matt Drudge is not real journalism, BTW).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that:
1) yes, this guy is right. Journalism is in very poor shape right now.
2)the fix is not going to happen with the current group of journalists, who are part of the problem.
3) The Internet will make it possible to make journalism a hobby, much like open source software has made it (in theory) a hobby to write software in your spare time.
If they do get sucked up by a real company that needs them to produce products, it will be gone in 3 to 5 years.
However, you make a good point... If this is going to be a real time system, it will need to receive, process, and transmit the data very, very quickly. In a busy flight center like NYC or Atlanta, things could get overloaded in a hurry. Also, I'd like to see how they handle a new plane arriving in the airspace. They'd have to have some sort of announcement window that would allow new planes to enter the system and a good way to deal with planes that drop off (when to stop tracking).
Of course, if this is just a peer-peer system, the chances for saturation are very, very high.
Also, as far a powerful transmitters, remember that airplanes have a major advantage over ground based transmitters: height. Generally, you can communicate over very long distances with very low power, only because you are 10,000 feet above the earth.
Someone below makes the point that it can't be expected that the CEO knows how to do every job under him. Sure, I agree with that, but he had damn well better know how to do the job of everone who directly reports to him, and be expected to help out from time to time as well.
Also, from a lower level manager standpoint, how the heck are you going to review someone if you don't know what they do, can't possibly do it yourself, and have no plans to learn how to do it? KLOCS?
The worst managers out there don't bother to get their hands dirty, or haven't been out of their office in 10 years, etc. I've noticed this type of manager is usually the one who golfs every Friday, uses every corpspeak buzzword out there, and generally has no clue as to how things work.
Lucky for the rest of us, most of them are going away these days, what with consolidation and all...
Star Trek movies worked the same way, the odd numbered ones sucked.
Disclaimer: I work for a cable company. This comment does not represent the ideas of my employer.
There really aren't any barriers per say, and many communities have more than one cable company (the one I live in, for example). Most of them are servicing apartment buildings, setting up bulk agreements with the building managers/owners. Sometimes they are good, sometimes not so good. If they are good, and can reach a profitability stage, they can begin to expand to normal residential service. But, there is a very high price to setting up a broadband cable network (or a CLEC, or whatever). That is one reason that wireless is a big deal right now. Wall street is seeing how much it costs to upgrade wired networks and doesn't want to foot the bill. So, the investors are convincing the government that it makes much more sense to sell wireless spectrum to the highest bidder. This has the effect of taking out the small players (auctions are very expensive), lets the feds pay off the debt (theoritically - one of the big reasons the budget will "ballence" is becuase of projected revenue from spectrum auctions), and takes money out of local communities - that franchise fee you pay on your cable bill every month.
OK, here we go again.
Yes, cable requires all users in a node to share the same bandwidth. Fine. All those users are sharing a 30Mbps link on the downstream (to user), assuming a 16QAM signal. It is somewhat higher if the cable system is using a 256QAM downstream carrier, which no one is right now due to carrier to noise issues. They are sharing a 10Mbps upstream signal, assuming a burst QPSK signal on the upstream (the other option in most cases is 16QAM, which again, is not used due to c/n issues).
1.5Mbps over a cable system would be very, very inefficient and I seriously doubt that any cable company would be interested in such a system.
As far as DSL being technologically superior, guess what? DSL uses 16QAM and QPSK as well. The signal runs over your pair to a DSLAM (not sure what it stands for) where it is combined with other's signals. From there it travels over the telco's ATM switch to your ISP.
Also, your calculations are off. There is no truly reliable way to figure out bandwidth over a packet switched network. That is one major problem with VoIP, QOS schemes either don't work under major loads, or haven't been developed to the point they need to be for lifeline service. Figure somewhere about 60-80% utilization of the available bandwith before normal users begin to notice, provided there are no other issues, such as a slow router, noise, etc.
That's also what keeps the Tonight Show and Letterman on the air. The reality is that Nightline normally blows them out of the water on ratings, but generally doesn't get the same advertising revenue.
Another example of how terrible the current ratings system is: Touched by an Angel. While this group may not watch it, it is one of the most popular programs on the air. CBS almost canceled it due to low ratings, but kept it on after a MASSIVE viewer response (one of the biggest ever).
There are some interesting things going on in the high end graphics world. It is now possible to get a box from SGI that can make a virtual set. The talent (actors) just walk around a bluescreen set and computer takes care of the rest. You can even move the camera and the set will move in response, keeping the set looking real. I have seen examples of this, and you really can't tell (as long as the lighting on the talent doesn't give it away).
I can see the day when the next generation playstation or Sega box will be able to create photorealistic images from nothing. Just have a bucket of pre-defined actors ready to go, set them in a world, and give them something to say.
I think the only thing holding the concept back is believable voice synthesis.