So I just finished watching the second season of “Jericho” today - a fantastic (at least in my opinion :p ) series surrounding a small town in the US of A (or is that AS of A? - Subtle reference to season two ) post a nation-wide nuclear attack on various US cities. It is a witty post-apocalyptic drama which explores some very interesting concepts and philosophies in a post terrorism world; and it’s setting (small town called Jericho) brings an emotional warmth to the series without sacrificing its provocative and challenging ideas and situations.

For those of you who aren’t aware of Jericho’s history, it was originally cancelled by its network in the US (CBS) at the end of its first season due to poor Nielsen ratings (More on those later). By that stage the series had picked up a significant fan base which didn’t appreciate the sentiment. In the final episode of Season One in a very dramatic scene one of the characters responds to another town that has declared war on Jericho “Nuts to you”. So what did the fans do in response to its cancellation?

They rallied together and sent more than TWENTY TONNES of unshelled peanuts to the CBS head office. See the video below for day three of the deliveries:

So, in response to the outpouring of support from fans CBS decided to re pick up the series for a shortened second season.

Unfortunately this second season once again didn’t survive the holy Nielsen Ratings test - and shortly before the end of the second season it was once again canceled (most likely permanently) and a final episode was subbed in to avoid the series ending in a second cliffhanger.

Problem is - why do Nielsen ratings define which series are successful and which aren’t? Take a look at the stats for March:

(from http://www.nielsenmedia.com/)

Half of the top 10 shows according to the Nielsen ratings are reality tv (American Idol has been the number one ranked show for the past three years). Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying reality tv sucks and should be taken off the air and there are times that families want to sit down for 10 minutes without having to worry about episodes they have missed and watch another mindless show (Reality TV seems to have becoming the Game-show tv of the 21st century). The problem is that shows that clearly have strong followings and empassioned loyal viewer bases are being canceled left right and center and we are ending up with an overwhelming majority of Reality/Mindless TV programming across the board - and little to no respite for viewers who are genuinely interested in watching something thought-provocative.

I believe this imbalance is one of the significant influences to people spending LESS time watching TV in favor of other activities such as using the internet. In fact - for the first time EVER the average number of hours a person spends casually (i.e not including work) on the internet surpassed the average number of leisure hours spent watching tv.

The casual tv viewers who are interested in turning on the tv at any point in their day are generally not interested in long multi-episode story lines hence the popularity of reality tv amongst these demographics. The problem is the networks are pushing their loyal “TV Buffs” on to other mediums such as dvd sales and internet downloads (including piracy which is far from what the networks should be encouraging). Now this is where the “real world ratings” start to come out. How successful do you think the dvd sales of “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars” are compared to the sales of box sets of scripted series such as Jericho, Farscape, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, etc. As a matter of thought - I don’t think I’ve seen ANY box sets available for reality tv series beyond the single disc ‘highlights’ that frequently end up in the $2 bin at VideoEzy…

So the question is - why are the TV networks driving away their “TV buff” customers in favor of the casuals? Surely a loyal fan-base has a much greater financial potential (after all the networks ARE companies and we can’t begrudge them this) - than users who only turn it on because they have nothing else to do for the half an hour waiting for their dinners to cook?

I think the real problem lies in both the sample source of the Nielsen ratings (usually families who would like the additional income the surveys provide - a demographic unlikely to become passionate about a series that caters to “the thinking public” - not to mention the unlikeliness of a sci-fi geek being comfortable with installing a box to allow a company to spy on his tv habbits) as well as the (conspiracy) theory that the networks intentionally don’t want scripted shows to survive compared to reality tv shows as they are much more expensive to produce and don’t work in “surges” like the reality shows do - with more of a sustained loyal viewer base rather than the sudden peaks of viewers everyone wondering whether “Felicity makes it though knock-outs tonight”.

Problem for the networks is that Reality/gameshow crowds are by nature fickle and unmaintainable. Reality TV has had the advantage over the past few years of being “something new and different” - but that luster is starting to fade and the crowds leisure time is starting to be spent on other mediums (which is exactly what the tv networks DONT want). By pushing the loyal viewers on to other mediums such as DVD and Internet they are encouraging their own long-term demise (Ed Note: demise as in a significant loss of viewership - but tv will always exist).

This shift in business structure is something many other businesses are exploring and is interestingly demonstrated with the “Long Tail” model ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail ) which illustrates through the expeiences of many other mediums (including the music and litrature industries) demonstrating the initial “surge” of revenue usually is outweighed by the long-term revenue that a product will generate over time; so long as (unlike reality tv and gameshow tv) the product has the staying power to still be of interest in the longer term. Scripted series continue to make money for the producers and networks years into the future (x files, star trek, neighbours, seinfeld), where as beyond initial launch reality tv episodes become worthless. To coin an example in the litrature industry - do you think “The Da Vinci Code” book made the most money in the first week of going on sale; or in the combined subsequent years to follow.

There seems to be the misconception by the network execs that internet piracy is the sole cause for their already suffering performance. Maybe they should take a look at the real cause for why their customers are “changing channels”.