Brett, your point about liking what you like, not because of the numbers, or you need to spend sunday watching 'ugly sunday' becuase it's a rating killer, thinking for yourself is a wonderful if not often used trait ;(

I'm not sure if I actually heard this on your podcast, apolgies if I did, but apparently the system is very much the same in the US, families that have the 'what you are watching boxes' don't automatically give them to their kids when they go off to uni.... which really skews off the numbers.

The Greed Guide has an article on ratings this week.

CAN comments in the blog be included under the heading of Letters to Boxcutters? Maybe just on a selective basis...

It's interesting to see that the Green Guide are continuing to follow our lead on issues. Just days after I question the interest in ratings and why we, as viewers, care about them at all, they dedicate a cover story to the matter.

This snippet from the breakout box story shed some light on the reality:
AGB Nielsen staff informed me that young families, tenants and people with lots of home technology tended to drop out most quickly while older people stayed the longest. Media and research professionals were not supposed to participate and non-English speakers were least likely to join. Busy people everywhere tend to be impatient with surveys.

I left the panel wondering about the collected personality types that might be neglected. If busy people, young people, those sensitive about privacy, high technology users, non-English speakers and media professionals were neglected, whose taste does Australian television represent?

Could I venture it's the boring, comfortable middle-class suburbanite white homowner, who requires an outlet to vicariously experience a more interesting existence?

I'm not now, nor on the show, suggesting Ratings: NO. I just want to encourage people to think for themselves about good television rather than looking at various, spun, viewer figures from each of the networks, seeing, for example, something like What About Brian not pulling 1.5mil and concluding that 7 have got to axe it or shove it into 11:30 Tuesdays.

Of course, this ignores the fact that they haven't necessarily got anything to put in there that's going to rate better unless they burn something like Shark, that's likely to be a peak prime-time winner later in the year.

Have a look at the Green guide today or read the stories online - Ratings Game - My life as a demographic

BB

If you write it Kerrie, rest assured Brett will read it out. Right now he is reading this trying to figure how to get on ep 76.

Glad it seems to be ratings yes - I find it all very interesting, especially at this time of year.

Ratings yes. Even though I find it completely bewildering, it's good to know what people are supposedly watching and how it affects the industy, the networks and the decisions they make. Maybe we should get a new chicken, though.

PS. That'll teach me to email my deepest, darkest secrets and dreams to the Boxcutters... Don't read out the one about the pushbike and the trapeze artist and the camembert.

Ratings, Yes, I don't mind hearing about it. Although I thought about the question posed, why do we focus on it so much.

I started to think, well if we know it rates well, then it must be good tv, but of course I was wrong.

I think it was summed up best that the ratings are at least a way of working out who is watching what when... and that is of interest to some people, overall though, we know it's not a great system, but it's the only one we've got dammit!

Ratings - Yes, at least it tells you what people are not watching