Yeah, I'm blunt, but I honestly do try to keep from crossing the line into outright "rude to your face," I promise. My last post was not intended as a slap in the face to the folks who have commented on the Nielsen ratings system.

These comments simply reminded me of some thoughts I had over a year past when watching a "save our show" campaign for a show that, quite frankly, I didn't think deserved saving. I should have made that clear. I was posting thoughts I had a long time ago, before I had a forum like this to post them in.

Consider:

#1 - Nielsens are what we got. Live with them or find a better system yourself. (Me, I'd resist having a monitor on every, single television in the country so that people would know everything everyone watched, but I have Privacy Issues.)

#2 - Send letters before "your" show is cancelled, to both the networks and the advertisers. Make your voice heard before TPTB have made up their minds to toss something into the garbage. (If I''d heard half the praise of Firefly before the cancellation that I heard after it, I might have tried watching it again.) If a show is good, get the word out.

#3 - If you love a show, go out before it's cancelled and campaign to get people to watch it. It's not sufficient to sit on a "Firefly list" and talk about how wonderful the show is. You have to tell the people who aren't yet watching it.

Be creative, people!

Why not take out an ad in Variety or somewhere, thanking the network or production company or advertisers for putting a show on the air while the show is still alive and viable? Or, since that will mostly reach "industry" people and what you want is to gather in new viewers, why not pay for an ad on a large-volume website like (wincing) TWOP? (But try and show some class, even with on-line ads.)

Do both. But do whatever you do publicly, in a forum that will reach new people who might be encouraged to watch the show, thereby improving ratings. Work within the system and give TPTB what they want. Public strokes, reinforcement, and free, to them, publicity.

I just....sheesh. I'm getting all pissy again, aren't I?

Disclaimer: This is directed to the world at large and not at anyone who may have read, commented on, or fallen asleep over any blog entry I've written.

I just hate these reactionary campaigns full of invective about how evil it is for people trying to make a living to make the best living they can, okay? They don't want to cancel shows and it's ignorant to sit around saying that they do it out of spite.

If TPTB cancel a show, they have to find something else that will do better. I think we don't have half an idea of how hard that is, but I'm willing to bet that they avoid it if at all possible.

You all know the ratings game, you know what constitutes "good" numbers for a show, and you know how the process works. If you love a show, pump some love into it early on, before it goes critical.

(P.S. I should never compose straight into the blogger software. This is probably full of typographical errors and I've no doubt said something that's twice as insulting as what I sat down to apologize for, but there you go. That's sort of how I am and it's the kind of thing my friends pretend not to know me because of. I just want to note that my New Years' Resolution this year is to try and learn to stop ending sentences with prepositions. And to learn how to use a semi-colon.)

(P.P.S. Doggone it, I got all sidetracked.

I was rude to the people who commented previously and I'm apologizing, okay? I seem to have an inability to just say that, straight out.)