"Beacon" Ratings (or How Scape Ousted Tracker)

[McC]

It seems that the novelty of Tracker may be wearing off (this is me tooting my FarScape horn rather than observing any actual trend), as FarScape achieved a 1.3 over Tracker's 1.2 with this past Friday's "Bringing Home the Beacon." Full details available here (http://www.watchfarscape.com/news/article.php?newsid=239).

[Vertigo1]

YES! Lets keep it up ppl! :)

[Artemis]

It will be interesting to see if SG1's ratings drop when Farscape is gone. I will be surprised if Tracker gets a second season.

[Mike]

I still can't get over the fact that Tracker had higher ratings than Farscape. But at least it seems Sci-Fi can't claim they've found an adequate replacement for Farscape. That is if Tracker's ratings keep going down.

[Vertigo1]

Well, I've never had much faith in Scifi channel once they axed 'scape. Had high hopes that they might re-think their ill-thought decision, but not alot of faith. :(

[Mike]

I suspect that Stargate's ratings will remain fairly stable once Farscape is gone. As Kemper has noted, they attract different audiences. But I will not watch Stargate once Farscape stops airing. I only watched it because of Farscape, but to me it's not appointment television.

[Vertigo1]

Mike: Watch "A Window of Opportunity" and then come back and say that. :)

[Arrghman]

Originally posted by Artemis
It will be interesting to see if SG1's ratings drop when Farscape is gone. I will be surprised if Tracker gets a second season.

Tracker is actually an OLD show... the reason its on SFC is that Tremors wasn't ready on time and so the rights to rerun Tracker were quickly bought as something to throw into that timeslot... but it's not an originally produced show.

Stargate's ratings will remain quite stable after Farscape is off SFC, as Mike said... much of the audiences are different.

[Artemis]

I heard a lot of Scapers say that they watch SG1 but won't when Farscape ends. Of course these are people who probably don't have neilsen boxes. I will continue watching it but I've been a bit disappointed with this season. It seems all the good writers left when it moved to scifi.

[McC]

Nielsens are such a bad way to track who watches what on TV. I was in a discussion about this recently, and someone mentioned that almost all cable boxes now have chips in them that could be used to gather data on who's watching what. This would be a fantastic, anonymous (presumably) method of gathering accurate data on what people are watching -- all people, not just a select few that someone decided would be wise to pander to. *grumble* :mad:

[Arrghman]

I think the flaw with the Nielsen system really only comes into play with cable channels... network channels have a much higher viewership and thus the Nielsen sample is a much more accurate representation over there.

As it is now, the pseudo-random sample (IIRC, people are chosen at random but have the option of turning it down) doesn't really pander to anyone, it just isn't a high enough sample rate to accurately show trends in the cable viewership.

Of course, this is something that people have known for a long time... but since there's nothing better out there and networks and channels have to use some kind of basis for selling advertising space, there really isn't another option....

[Mike]

If all cable shows live and die by the same flawed Nielsen system, then what makes Farscape anymore of a victim then "Stargate"? I don't quite understand the logic of this argument.

[McC]

It's a system flawed on principle -- it ought to be corrected instead of propogating a bad idea.

[Arrghman]

Originally posted by Mike
If all cable shows live and die by the same flawed Nielsen system, then what makes Farscape anymore of a victim then "Stargate"? I don't quite understand the logic of this argument.

Because a larger percent of people who watch Stargate have Neilson boxes compared to the percent of people who watch Farscape and have Neilson boxes.

[Mike]

Originally posted by Arrghman


Because a larger percent of people who watch Stargate have Neilson boxes compared to the percent of people who watch Farscape and have Neilson boxes.

Is that because Stargate viewers came from broadcast tv?

[Arrghman]

Originally posted by Mike


Is that because Stargate viewers came from broadcast tv?

No, it just happened to turn out that way... Nielsons are, like I said, a mostly random sampling.

Here's an example, say there's a group of 100 people. 10 of them have Neilson boxes. Now suppose 70 of these people watch Stargate one night and 50 of these people watch Farscape with about 30 overlapping.

Two of the 10 boxes didn't watch either.
Five of the 10 boxes watched only Stargate.
Two of the 10 boxes watched both.
One of the 10 boxes watched just Farscape.

So the averages would say that 70% of the people watched Stargate and 30% of the people watched Farscape... but that's inaccurate, it was actually 50%.

Now if you increased the sample size... to say 20 people... then your results would be more accurate. That's the problem when it comes to cable channels... the total amount of people who watch them is much lower then the networks, and thus the sample size is too low to accurately reflect the amount of people who watch a particular thing.

[Mike]

That doesn't resolve why Stargate is more advantaged than Farscape. It still depends on who is watching what show.

[Arrghman]

Originally posted by Mike
That doesn't resolve why Stargate is more advantaged than Farscape. It still depends on who is watching what show.

Right, but it's skewed. Here's a nifty diagram to help illustrate what I mean...

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/neilson.jpg

Red is people who watch Stargate, green is people who watch Farscape, blue is the people with Neilson's and the overlaps are.. well... overlaps.

See how a larger percentage of people who have boxes watch Stargate then Farscape, but that percentage difference doesn't fully represent the actual percentage difference of all people.

So while yes, it still depends on who watches the show, the final averages don't accurately represent the real viewership numbers relative to each other.

[Mike]

Nice graphic, however it seems to me that the larger the circle, the bigger the overlap. Thus, I remain confused as to the flawed nature of the system.

I have a feeling I'm going to get taken behind the building and shot :(.

[Arrghman]

Okay, then how about this... look at the graphic above, and imagine that the Farscape circle is expanded outward away from the Neilson circle. This would cause the Neilson/Farscape overlap to grow very slightly but the actual Farscape viewership to rise by a much larger factor.

If the Neilson circle was bigger, or more people had Neilson boxes, the data would be less suceptable to occurances such as this.

[Mike]

I think I understand you now. I'm not the best at abstract mathmatical concepts ;).

[Vertigo1]

Originally posted by Artemis
I heard a lot of Scapers say that they watch SG1 but won't when Farscape ends. Of course these are people who probably don't have neilsen boxes. I will continue watching it but I've been a bit disappointed with this season. It seems all the good writers left when it moved to scifi.

Yeah, the story quality has dropped dramatically. :(

[Mike]

When I watch Stargate, I'm keenly aware of how very different the show is from Farscape. The best way to describe Stargate is 'conventional', making it very accessible. It's easy to understand why Stargate attracts a larger audience. I find Stargate quite 'familiar' and entertaining. It reminds me of the old sci-fi, like TNG. Farscape is carving a new and unconventional path for science fiction. Unfortunately, at the time-being, it looks like a failed evolutionary branch.

[Proximo]

Like Crichton himself, Farscape is a pioneer. And where a pioneer goes, others soon follow. THere was a time when people thought Everest was an impossible climb. Now people are up there every month. [/cliché]

Seriously though, once the genre has been branched, it's only a matter of time before more people follow the idea. Whether that turns out to be a good thing is something we'll have to wait and see.