Wow, I am really out of the loop. The CW doesn't air all over the country? I know that everyone's TV watching is so diverse now, but I figured it was at least "available". It's just included in my 'local' channels...
I live out in the boonies in Central MO -- there's a local CW station, but its signal is so weak that it doesn't reach my house, so we qualify for DishTV's Superstations package. Used to include three timezones of WB stations and two timezones of UPN stations, now it's got three timezones of the CW (WPIX, KWGN and KTLA) and howevermany useless superstations that were dumb enough to sign up with MyNetwork when they were left without a network after the merger (WWOR and WSBK, I think). Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, I sure buried the lede above but did I mention that I get three timezones of the CW? Yay, me! Well, it sure makes programming the DVR a whole lot easier on Thursdays, let me tell you.
thanks go_clo for some insight on Nielsen boxes; that still seems lame. Like Gallop polls. It's all about *which* random group of people happen to be polled, it's not truly representative of the whole- like it would really be that difficult to just keep track of everyone's Direct Tv/comcast box? idk...
Oh, I bet if they could just keep it down to extracting data from everyone's satellite or cable box, people would just hack 'em to make the ratings unreliable -- like, say, make the box read that you watched a repeat of Veronica Mars when you were watching a repeat of CSI just to "help" Veronica Mars in the ratings. So I don't imagine that that's *ever* gonna happen.
One of my best friends from the dorms at the real "Hearst" College (aka SDSU), was, of course, my roommate -- and he's pretty much finished up his PhD in psychology by now. One thing about him is that he had to take a *lot* of statistics classes because certain types of research in psychology are so dependent on statistic analyses of all sorts, not just polls, so I got a bit of a rough knowledge of how statistical sampling works. There *is* a scientific basis for this type of polling and mathematical algorithms for extrapolating the actual viewerships from these Nielsen viewers. I know, your eyes just rolled at what just said above
, but what it means is that it has a sound mathematical foundation
While it's based somewhat on the US Census (which is done every 10 years, of course), they're still always making adjustments to their algorithms to take into account the change of the demographics over time. They can't not make the adjustments, it just takes time for them to gather the data that tracks the demographic changes, such as the recent addition of college dorms to Nielsen samples -- a change that benefited a *lot* of the CW's shows -- Gg in particular -- because college students are the CW's target demographic but at the same time have been caught in the paradox of not being counted because they most often are citizens of their hometown, not of the city that they're studying in. IOW, they were falling through the cracks. Well, to make a long story . . . even longer . . . the Nielsens finally figured out how to take care of that paradox, which was a change had been a long time coming -- and it took so long to implement because they had to figure out how to gather the data when, well, dorms have many different ways and means of viewing TV -- TVs in your dorm room, TVs in communal rooms on your floor, communal rooms for the whole dorm building, classrooms, etc. But it's gotten more precise. (Similarly, an adjustment they made to samples of different ethic groups about three years back ended up boosting the ratings of spanish-language/network shows and hurting WB/UPN shows, but, well, the addition of dorms have kinda taken the edge off that one. BID.)
Anyway, it's mindboggling (and it makes me glad that my BA is in theater and not math *or* psychology), but when you talk to, say, the Temperance Brennan of Stastics (as opposed to forensic anthropology), as my roommate was (okay, he was more of a Hodgins) you realize, "My god, it takes so long to explain but it does make sense after all!
And enough with the teasers, when are we going to get an official word about this Season 8 business?! And I don't want Krisitin Veitch to get credit for it.
Well, remember that article on actor salaries in Entertainment Weekly from a couple of weeks back that made allusions in the first paragraph to certain actresses on the CW being miffed that Kyra Sedwick is making $250K per episode on The Closer -- a show on a basic cable channel, and a show that only films 13 episodes per year, and a show that's, well, just a police procedural. There's really only three actresses on the network that could reasonably be miffed, IMO -- Lauren, Alexis and Smallville's Kristin Kreuk. Something tells me that Kyra Sedwick is indirectly making the negotiations for Gg more tricky than they otherwise would have to be. I just hope that the CW realizes that they can't afford to NOT have Gg on the schedule next year, given the high failure rate of new shows, the high number of empty timeslots on the network even assuming that Gg returns and again, even the need to retain a tentpole show the year after next, when they don't have Smallville anymore. (Smallville will be ending next season whether they admit it before May 2008 or not.) Something tells me that if the rumor is true that LG and AB are reportedly going to agree to a 22-episode order with the provision that they can end it at 13-episodes, that strongly suggests to me that they're going to get as close to Kyra money as they can possibly get in exchange for the maximum number of episodes.
If I were an accountant for the WB, I'd probably have the gals contracted to take a lower salary, say, $150K per episode (I'm pulling the number out of my rear-end as an example, but based on the EW article and some discussions I've read, I'm guessing that it's in the ballpark of what LG already makes) if they only opt to do 13-episodes but then bump them up to, say, $200K-$225K or even more, retroactive to the first episode of the season if they stay on for the full 22.
It's my guess that there's some type of negotiating like that still going on between the network, the studio and the actresses. Haggling over financial issues, production deals and other incentives to try to get them to stay on for as long as possible while the network and studio at the same time remain able to make a profit (or at least lose as little as possible) from new episodes of the show. Warner Studio can probably more afford to pay them what they deserve than the network can just because the show does so well on DVD that it's likely that Warner still will make a hefty profit on new episodes even if they, say, given LG and AB (more?) profit participation in the DVDs (NOTE: many lead TV actors do NOT get profit participation on DVDs, or the profit participation is so minimal as to be a joke. Heck, a lot of the time, they don't even get the comp copies of the DVDs that they're owed because comps tend to get ransacked from production offices.) But I think that now that the show has wrapped for the season, they're likely working to close the deal as soon as possible. I doubt that they'll let the negotiations drag on until the very last minutes before the Upfronts if at all possible simply because announcing the renewal at the Upfronts would IMO create expectations so high in the network, the studio, the advertisers *and* the audience that any and every returning show would absolutely 100% be unable to fulfill. With the season finale airing on May 15th and the CW's Upfronts occurring two days later on the 17th,
I won't start worrying unless we haven't heard anything by May 8th or so. Actually, I'll start worrying on May 1st and start freaking out on May 8th.
At this point, though, I'm more worried about whether or not they'll announce if s8 will be the final season when they make any official announcement about its return. I think it's always a mistake to announce in advance that any given season of any given show is the final season of that show for the same reason that I think it would be a mistake to announce the show's renewal at the Upfronts -- it just pumps up everybody's expectations to heights that cannot possibly be met. And besides which, announcing that a given show's new season will be its final season will create resentment in the audience if, say, everybody changes their mind at the last minute ala 7th Heaven this past season. Well, really, 7H could never do anything right these past few years, but still . . .
-- Rob
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Seasons 8 AND 9: Because in some alternate universe, Lorelai doesn't sing Dolly Parton songs -- she's the fourth Dixie Chick.
