This is in response to the comments to my previous entry.

I'm no Nielsen expert :) but I've always heard that the ratings system has about a +/-2 percent accuracy, which is pretty accurate. Statistical sampling isn't a new technique and it wouldn't continue to be used unless it was pretty reliable and I think most of us will admit that.

I fault the economy. Or no-neck beer drinkers. Or women who really do watch soap operas. Or George Bush. Or someone like that.

The bottom line is that a "growing" body of viewers isn't always enough to convince advertisers to keep committing money to a show's production until it pulls enough viewers to make it a cost-effective proposition for them. Paying for a television show is expensive and science fiction shows tend to have hefty FX budgets that increase their costs even more.

Similarly, if a show pulls a reasonable number of viewers, but they're not the "right" demographic, advertisers aren't going to keep paying money to keep a show on the air.

I don't know any polite way to say this, so I'll just say it.

Advertisers and production companies care a hell of a lot less about hearing from twenty thousand passionate thirty year-old women than they would about hearing from 5,000 rabid eighteen year-old boys.

They want the boys watching. They want young viewers whose purchasing habits aren’t set and who can be convinced that this car will make them sexy or that soda pop will make them cool or these jeans really are babe-magnets, okay?

Advertisers aren't nuts. They know that the average 40 year-old makes more money than the average twenty year-old, but they also know that the 40 year-old already has brand preferences and is, statistically, very unlikely to change brands because of a catchy new advertising campaign.

I'm even less impressed about the effects of write-in campaigns from a "rabid" audience that is, in the end, a core group of dedicated fans and ten thousand volunteers who jump in to save any show someone loves, regardless of whether they watch, or intend to watch, the show themselves.

Every single time one of these campaigns succeeds in bringing a show back, even for one season, and the viewing audience either remains constant or (as often happens) drops, that makes the next campaign much less likely to succeed.

When these campaigns were rare, they had real impact. Now that every single show that manages to air two or three episodes before being cancelled gets a similar write-in campaign, the effect of each campaign is just that much more diluted.

I know "Firefly." I watched it in the beginning although I didn't watch it for long. But I've never even heard of the show called "Prey" that's quoted in the CNN article as having a "Save Our Show" campaign on a par with Firefly's.

Is Prey equally worthy of saving? Does it have the quality and potential attributed to Firefly?

I'm just asking, okay? Because the "rabid fans" organizing these campaigns don't seem to know the difference between true quality and "hey! I like it!" most of the time.

I could go on with a long list of shows I have heard fans crying over but whose cancellation didn't surprise me in the slightest, but there's no need in pissing off the entire world at once, is there?

The fact that "fan favorite" shows get cancelled doesn't automatically make everyone in the business of television some kind of evil troll.

The bottom line is that TV networks and execs and advertisers put their money where the numbers are. If the Nielsen's weren't accurate, TV networks and execs wouldn't use them because they get paid for success. Advertisers, similarly, would not be paying huge sums of money to fund various shows if they weren't damned sure that those shows were, in fact, pulling something very close to the number of viewers the Nielsen numbers claimed for them.

The fact that the large viewing audiences are tuning in to those half-witted "Survivor" and "Marry a Millionaire" shows is just that. A fact.

If you want someone to blame for the death, or the dearth, of what you consider intelligent entertainment, blame the tens of millions of Americans who don't want to think while they're watching television and who prefer the back-stabbing politics and jiggle factor of "Survivor" or the vapid Cinderella-story of some aspiring actress pretending to fall in love with a rich man while making sure to keep her best profile turned toward the camera.

Don't blame the people who produce the shows. Like yourselves, they have a job to do.

And don't forget that just because "everyone you know" thinks a show is great is not proof that it's great. Fandom is made up of a self-selected group of people (as are you and your friends) and we are not a valid group for statistical sampling.

In closing, let me add that one thing and only one might work. Write to the sponsors of the shows you like and swear you'll buy their stuff if they keep paying for the show. Then buy the stuff. If enough people do this, they'll keep the show on the air.

Of course, "enough" is a relative term. If 10,000 rabid fans start buying Bounty Paper Towels, that's hardly going to be a blip on the radar, is it?

Isn't it a shame that there aren't, in fact ten million people watching the show who would be willing to switch to Bounty to keep it on the air?