>So you really think that ratings are not that important on TV?

They aren't, or they would have adapted some real measuring of what's being watched. The ratings system is based on technology that's more than 20 years old. There have been attempts to measure exactly when does the viewer flip the remote, but the industry refused to adopt them, specially the version which would count how many people are actually in front of the set. And imagine if they could know how many minutes of their programming is watched with sound off?

My recent pastime is to flip between channel 3 (CBS, I think) and channel 9 (NBC, I suppose - I've stopped noticing logos long ago) to watch local news at 23:00 (or 11pm in Anglosaxon units)... and no sound, most of the time. They report pretty much the same news, albeit in slightly different order. They have commercials at the same time (channel 3 is usually 10 seconds behind), and the weather forecast at the same time, and the shutoff time (i.e. when the sports block begins, that's when I press the red button) also within 10 seconds. And the news are local: crime, fires, traffic... and nothing else, I think. These two cover about 90% of the news, then about 8% is about pets and the remaining 2% is, by my perception, the various unclassifiable stuff. And about 15% of the time goes to the announcements of the news to be seen after the commercials, which get repeated several times - and in the end get to be longer than the advertised piece itself.