>>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.

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yeah I've noticed all this as well. You'll find that 90% of the tv-stations will play their commericals at the same time - thus for us channel-clicking people ya always land on a commerical.
As for the local news shows first they tell you what they're going to tell you about, then tell you about it...then tell you what they're going to tell you about next, then tell you about it, heck they'll even tell you 3 or 4 TIMES that they're gonna tell ya something before they finally get around to telling ya about it! - heck sometimes they'll spend 3 minutes telling you what's coming up - only to find out it only takes them 30 seconds to tell ya what they'll were going to! - Then they tell you about what they told you about...I mean out of a 30 minute newscast I think you're lucky if you get about 7 minutes of real news out of it.

Now as for the ratings - well the ratings may not be as acurate as they could be - but they are quite important to the stations & networks. The higher the ratings, the more viewers, the more viewers the more you can charge for that sycronized commercial time I was talking about - and there is a LOT of that time. When I started recording 'That 70's Show' to my harddrive and editing out the commercials - I discovered I was left with 18 minutes. 18 minutes out of a 30 minute show. so 12 out of every 30 minutes is $ to them. I'm at the stage now where I won't even WATCH a regular TV show anymore - I use my fine Windows XP Media Center machine to record them so I can skip all the darn commercials! The only thing I'll watch that's not prerecorded (other than commerical free chanels like HBO and ShowTime) is the occasioal sporting event and the news - and the news shows are on borrowed time in my book. I've even installed TVTonic (www.tvtonic.com) in an attempt to bypass all the worthless garbage and commercials of the typical news channels (FOX, CNN, MSNBC, etc).
I would gladly pay for a subscriber channel like HBO or ShowTime that was a NEWS channel if it didn't have all the extra worthless stuff in it like what I'm seeing nowdays.

Now I also noticed someone commented something along the lines of 'thats the way ratings work, if you don't like it read a book'..blah blah. Well ya know what - that might be true - but this isnt some sitcom here, its the NEWS, and people who make decisons at CNN (and other news outlets) need to take some responsibily - talk about pop-singing-twit or colapse of entire government - duhhhhh--- this doesn't sound to me like a complicated decision. Hey when the trial is over - have breaking coverage of the verdict - fine. But you just watch this circus over the next few months - they'll have interviews with Michael Jackson's kitty-cat's pet psychologist for 30 minutes (minutes the 12 minutes of commericals of course) by the time this is over. Heck 2000 troops in Iraq might get blown up but no one here is going to notice because we'll be stuck watching a newscast about how depressed Michael Jackson's kitty-cat is since it's kittens were molested by Michael! arrgggh!

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