Instead of creating a new post each week for comments and questions on our strategy blog posts for the TVBigshot game I thought we’d just switch to one post with running comments and questions.
To see our most recent TVBigshot Blog Posts go here.
Agree or Disagree? Comment away!
Bill, I agreed with most of your advice, and because Deal or No Deal did have a “good” week last week (it was one of the highest momentum movers upwards) and that will likely mean it won’t have momentum points thsi week, it will likely not lose too much overall and is likely guaranteed at least one time slot win. It came close to even a top 5 last week, and without the Academy Awards and the red carpet special that beat it, it might have a chance this coming week. It looks like it’ll only be on twice next week, so only 2 dates will need to be factored.
Even if or maybe even especially if it does go down, I think it would be a good buy on monday or tuesday – I’d keep it for the added money it’ll get on Wednesday and the potential for going back up again the next week as well as the likely Monday time slot win (which seems to be very consistent), then sell it next monday or tuesday afternoon before it goes down in price if the ratings went down this week. Me I’ll likely keep it for the monday ratings win, since I bought it way back when it was cheap and kept it, so nothing lost on my part. Exception!!!! If this Monday’s show finally gives away the million, ratings next Monday mmight go down, until the million is given away though finally, I expect it to continue winning Monday’s, especially with the lack of competion. I can’t predict as well what will happen after the million is given away. If you’re not a gambler, selling by Sunday and taking the added bucks might be better if the million is given away this monday. Me, I’ll keep it anyway. It’s done well for me so far.
Also thank you for pointing out Law & Order. I almost sold it, because my local paper TV guide did not show that it was a new episode, so because of your advice, I checked the NBC site and sure enough it is a new episode, and therefor, as you advise, a likely time slot winner (besides being a good show and NBC).
On Thursday, you’re likely right that LOST will drift down, but I’m keeping it anyway. I love the show and hope springs eternal for me that it will beat CSI again – a show I admit bias against for many reasons too numerous to list.
NN, I’m glad I kept you in L&O.
Indeed, large networks, those with $1+ billion will have to buy lots more shows than I advise.
For them it really becomes a matter of which shows *not* to buy.
But I also figure that the high budget network moguls know what they’re doing, most of them likely more than I do and so if I can occasionally point out something that they didn’t realize, I’m happy.
Hi Bill,
Your comment about Moment of Truth isn’t accurate–it will earn huge growth points this week. That doesn’t necessarily make it a good buy, but it’s definitely not in steady decline.
Pretzelgirl
Once again,you are correct pretzelgirl! Editing now!
RE; Don’t Forget the Lyrics
The Rocket will fizzle next week since it won’t be after American Idol and will not earn the $84 mil price tag. Moment of Truth will decline from this week’s post-Idol airing but may earn close to the $53 mil price tag. I prefer to bet on shows that have a chance of going up and getting some ratings increase bonus points. Truth and Lyrics have no chance for that next week.
SFTV, you, as well, are correct. I must have needed more coffee this morning.
Thanks for pointing out the L & O move, but I think it’s not quite as simple as that. It’s going to take about a 10-12 mil hit next week in value. You can sell now for 77 mil and buy two shows for next week that will approx. equal L & O’s points and then rebuy L&O
next Wed with the proceeds from the sale of those and pick up about another 10-20 mil in value the following week.
It’s a tough call. But I think buying a couple of the new shows (NewAm, Canterbury, etc) debuting this week (if you haven’t already) with the proceeds of the sale of L&O gives you double value in and out. I think there is 30-
40 mil or more in value to be picked up that can then be used to purchase new episodes of established shows coming back from hiatus that will show big gains two weeks down the road just by juggling L&O and two debut shows.
I’m trying to chop out extra money to load up on returning hits for their comeback debuts. (Did any of this make sense???)
P.S. I’m in 530th place, so I’m not going to win the thing. But it’s not whether you win or lose – it’s how you play the game. (Or so say us losers).
I put in my TVBS site if you click on my name… haven’t sold L&O yet – I’m still trying to do the math and see how these debuts go.
P.P.S – Just checked my TVBS and I moved up to 504th on adjustments.
But Jon, if you trade pre-Monday and pre-Wednesday, as I’m sure you do, then you need not be concerned about value loss in the shows you hold Sunday at midnight.
The Tuesday moves are all obvious, and really are the same regardless of your budget unless you have very, very little. Your budget gain trades on Tuesday have nothing to do with your line up points trades on Sunday.
What makes sense on Sunday night is heavily dependent on your budget level. If you only have enough budget for L&O OR a couple smaller shows, then you have to weigh your options [even in that case I think that L&O is among the best deals], but many folks have plenty of money to buy ANY good option, and they’re looking at the other side of the process which is “where can I put my remaining money with the least chance that I under earn.”
One more PPPS: I refuse to buy reality shows, on principal, which pretty much took me out of the running 4 months ago.
Re: Bill
The L&O move is in addition to all of the shows I am sure I am keeping already, (like ‘Christine’ which I think has a big night Monday) and a coupla others that should score well and add price value as well.
I’m only playing with 520 mil. Learned to late that I wanted to be increasing my bankroll so that I could buy more shows, by then I was hoplessly behind. If I knew then what I know now…
Not the best place to ask this, but I cant find it in the bigshot rules/faq.
But how do you get more money? I see people with tons of shows. Help a new player out please.
Thanks in advance
John
John,
1. You buy shows before Tuesday midnight that are going up in value during the repricing on Wednesday AM. Those are no brainer moves since the prior weeks final results are known by mid-day on Tuesday and the preliminary results are known long before that.
2. If you’ve been doing that since September, you could build up quite a budget.
Just happened to see this at the top of the recents as I was toggling. Thot I’d give an update…
Picked up 2 spots in the standings (to 500th exactly – I’ve gained on the field every week for the last 10 weeks but I have a feeling I can’t go any higher).
471 points for the week (7093 total) – didn’t get any credit for AmerDad which appeared one hour earlier than normal (doesn’t seem fair and 31 million more in value (all New Amsterdam) to $551mil total. Now I’m just picking my favorites with no chance to even make top 100.
Buying and selling premieres about my only strategy these days. Later
Jon V: Was American Dad a repeat? Because I think that is the only time you don’t get credit for it if it’s not in its usual time slot. With shows like “Deal or No Beal” for example, there can be as many as 3 episodes a week – similar to American Idol in the early stages – but those times aren’t necessarily the same each week. I.E. only Monday is arguably the actual usual “time slot”, but new episodes running on Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday (all days that I remember Deal running) all count and get factored in (averaged). However, if it is a repeat – such as Deal’s special “charity” episodes, those shouldn’t count unless they are run in the “usual” Monday time slot.
Remember though that since American Dad runs on Sunday (I think) that the price increase I think gets accounted for quicker than say a show from Monday, but you have to buy it way in advance compared to Monday and Tuesday shows. A Sunday show has to be bought the previous Sunday night in order for it to count that week in your line-up, whereas a Monday show can be bought the night before. If all that is accounted for, then you should take it up with the mods. I’d be surprised though if a rerun did that well compared to a regular run episode even if it was in a new time slot. If so, then FOX should definitely consider giving the show that new time slot for good.
Sorry if that was a repeat for you, but hopefully there might be some new people who benefitted from the review.
Jon V: I just realized that your 31 million increase wasn’t related to your American Dad comment – sorry about that. So please ignore my above post.
Thanks Bill!
Whoever is doing price updating these past three weeks needs to be sacked and the person that did them before re-hired. Yes, I realize they are most likely the same person. I am a penny-pincher (despite not even being in the top-100) and don’t want to be saddled with a profit loss while betting on next week’s programming.
Rip off? Oh yeah… I find it completely gyppy that anyone who wanted to purchase the last episode of Jericho for the points, even though it was well know the show was going to be cancelled, was not allowed to dump the show after getting the points. Total RIP OFF! Why didn’t the God’s of Bigshot just label the show as cancelled when it was known that was the final episode, instead of making us think we could actually buy and get rid of after the final episode. Also, am I mistaken or was there some sort of snafu regarding points a few weeks ago when the new shows that premiered never got any raise in price or points after the week it aired? Oh well, very frustrating but I doubt anything will change.
Agree about Jericho…what a crock. Not only that…but they RECOMMENDED Jericho as a purchase but never mentioned you were going to get screwed on your budget. Not cool.
Thanks for the price updates. Two weeks crammed into one. Classy.
I bought Jericho for the points and then dumped it before it aired and was canceled. After the Monday morning update you don’t need to hold the shows on your line-up.
The real pain is that we can never get the money increase for final episodes. For example – we couldn’t get the Lipstick Jungle increase of $11 million unless you held it points’less from the week before. Hopefully they’ll figure a fix before next year’s game.
How were “two weeks crammed into one”? I must have missed that.
“The Duel premiere will only cost you $42m”
Edit for 3/27 Blog – the price for Duel is $43.
The biggest gainer for the week wasn’t “Extreme Home Makeover.” That honor goes to “Til Death” which will go from 37 million to 60.
You are correct! I will edit and acknowledge!
The biggest loser this week should be Dancing With the Stars based on treating the recap show as a seperate episode, making it a $17 million drop. If anything, it should earn its value this week finally.
Boy, I’m having a bad week. Correction incoming!
In actuality, DWTS didn’t drop as much, but was still the biggest drop due to how the game handles scoring for multiple episodes on the same night. See my analysis in the Enhancements thread on the TWOP message boards for the full details. Even though the recap show was counted as a separate entity in the ratings, the game treated the recap show and the results show as one entity for the night and averaged it with Monday’s ratings to get a higher score overall. The same thing happened with Miss-Guided a couple of weeks ago.
Hi Bill,
New Amsterdam is also a season finale this week. Bones has been getting a lot of advertising for the past couple weeks. Fox has a few viewers tuning in(!!!)so they’ve probably seen that advertising. Maybe some viewers will stick around after Bones to see the New Amsterdam finale. Since it’s not that expensive, I think New Amsterdam is a good bet this week.
pretzelgirl
As always, you are correct! At least on the finale, I still don;t have a good feeling about the show points.
Hi Bill,
Just writing to encourage people to pick up “Eli Stone”, too–one of the biggest pay-offs of the week, since it’ll be at 49 or 50, up from 36 million.
pretzelgirl
Thanks again!
You’re welcome. Forgot to say you were right about “New Amsterdam.” Although it was the season finale, the show didn’t do as well last night as it did during the previous week (and it was up against the NCAA championship last week too–go figure!)
pretzelgirl
Oprah’s finished. You don’t want to buy her….
Same with Biggest Loser.
Indeed, last week’s episodes were the finales for both.
Deadeye, thanks for the corrections. I have updated.
If we already have a show(s) in our lineup that are finished for the season & going on “hiatus” would we still get the $ increase in our budgets? Still confused on this, as I dumped Celeb. Apprentice after its finale but before the price change (and it increased). I have Biggest Loser but didn’t dump it yet as I was going to see if I got the $ bump this time THEN would dump it. Thanks for clearing this up.
Marc, Now that I read your comment, I may have made a mistake with my “correction”.
Oprah and Biggest Loser may still reset their prices upwards on Wednesday morning, even though they are finished for the year. I don’t know, the rules confuse me at times as well.
I’m going to remove both of them from the post entirely since I’m not sure any longer.
Looks like both Oprah (+7) & Biggest Loser (+13) got the $ increase, so both would have been a good purchase for this update. I wish I had realized this earlier about “hiatus” shows as I could have made some money on the Celeb. Apprentice finale. Oh well. Live & learn!
That’s one of the inconsistencies of the game. They put Celebrity Apprentice on hiatus quickly, so it was not available to buy on the Monday and Tuesday before the final price increase. In order to get the price increase, you would have had to keep it in your lineup through the Sunday night schedule lock, thus getting zero points for it that week, but getting the money boost on Wednesday. I think they also did the same thing with New Adventures of Old Christine.
However, this week, both Oprah and Biggest Loser were left in active status with bogus “next air dates” so that you could buy them on Monday and Tuesday to get the price increase without hanging on to them.
Eli Stone, Amnesia, Just For Laughs, Here Come the Newlyweds, New Amsterdam and a few others that have ended are still listed and active with a bogus “next air date”. That’s been a major issue with the game that they don’t seem to be able to resolve.
Hi Bill,
CSI: NY is at 86 million, not 125. It might not be worth the money at that price either, but it’s a little bit more reasonable than a 125 million dollar show would be.
pretzelgirl
Indeed, I had confused the CSI price/results and the CSI:NY schedule position, thanks once again!
Apostrophe abuse strikes again: In your advice for 4/30, you say “Law & Order’s did a preliminary 9.0 last night.” It should be “Law & Order did….” Or “Law & Order’s new episode did….” As always, I apologize for being such a nitpicker. What can I say? Apostrophe abuse must be fought.
Ike, I think I
maymight just block your ability to commentI hope this is an ok place to ask this, but looking at the bonus points, etc – how is Grey’s Anatomy a top 5 show without even winning it’s timeslot? If CSI beat it on Thurs in total viewers, shouldn’t CSI be the #5 show of the week behind Idol and DWTS? Any clarification would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much.
Joslyn, if I were king of the ratings world total eyeballs would be the most important statistic, but the game’s point system is driven off of the Nielsen “household rating”, and Nielsen itself still uses this as it’s default ranking system. For most of the data on *our* site, we rank by total viewers, but the game ranks by HH ratings points.
While CSI had more viewers per household, Grey’s had more households and so it ranked higher.
Mr. SFTV -
The trick is to take those shows that go on hiatus out of your lineup on Sunday and then go back in and rebuy them on Mon/Tues and then sell them again on Wed/Thurs/Fri to get the added value. Then you replace them by the Sunday. It costs a million per transaction and it’s a little more work, but that’s what the leaders have been doing since the get go (and me since December).
p.s. I’ve gone from 2500th place to 380th during that stretch.
Hello Bill:
Though this only has a very, very small thing to do with strategy for people, but the timeslot winners have to be a little off for the top 5/timeslots posted on the 29th.
Though it pains me to say it, because I usually choose CSI over Grey’s Anatomy for my line-up (though I don’t watch either – ever) and this past week it appeared to be a good strategy, it couldn’t have won the 9 o’clock time slot for that week (the one summarized on the 29th in your post) if Grey’s Anatomy was the final top 5 (since the two shows share a timeslot). It appears that it was very close according to the ratings link (Grey’s won by .1 rating point), but for those players who look back at your rankings blogs to help choose their shows, it might be confusing to have CSI as the winner for the 9 o’clock time slot on Thrusday, but Grey’s as the top 5 winner. (It was for me anyway, hence my research – though in the end I’ll likely stick with CSI again, it just won’t be as confident a pick as it was before I found CSI did not win its slot for that time period).
NN, You are correct! I get the Top 5/Timeslot list directly from the TVBigshot folks and didn’t even look at that one before I posted it. I’ll make sure things get corrected.
NN, I asked the TVBigshot folks and here’s the situation.
Both shows ran a bit past 10pm.
For the 9-10pm hour, CSI won with a 10.66 vs. Grey’s 10.65.
However, for the 10-11 overrun Grey’s had a 13.52 and CSI a 9.51. The overrun doesn’t count for the timeslot points for TVBS though.
The overrun did boost Grey’s overall to 10.74 HH rating while CSI had a 10.64, that’s how it could make the top 5 without winning its timeslot.
Bill:
Oh wow, thanks, because I never would’ve figured that out on my own. But now that you explain it it makes sense, even if the overrun stuff is pretty annoying in my opinion. It seems that it would be so arbitrary and/or influenced by whatever show comes next – otherwise it would make little sense to me that all of a sudden Grey’s would pick up a whole bunch of viewers for the last 2 or 3 minutes. And if LOST came next would people then turn the channel after 2 or 3 minutes? (I’d watch LOST myself). Very weird and confusing.
Personally, I wish the networks would cut it out with all of the overrun stuff – especially since in the Grey’s case, I’d rather have a couple more minutes of LOST if I had my choice.
Night Nymph, I agree 100% with you in terms of preferring more LOST, but, if I was a real TV BigShot at ABC, I’d definitely prefer to try and squeeze in an extra commercial pod during my most expensive show advertising wise. LOST is one of ABC’s better performers, but Grey’s draws a higher premium on advertising, I believe because of its concentration of 18-34 year old women.
When it comes to making the most money possible, I’d say they’re doing the right thing when it comes to Grey’s overrun.
NN, I did read your earlier comments, thanks.
Thanks for the heads up on the ER and Supernatural finales.
Thanks! You are correct, and I have edited the post!
Let me get this straight. Although the contest ends June 1st, shows that air May 25-31 do not count? Is this certain?
I just wanted to say that this was a great deal of fun. and ending up in the top 1.5 percent of the field was very satisfying. I would play again next year. I hope they bring it back.
RickNick, We hope they bring it back too!
Vink, We neither make nor enforce the rules of the game, we just write the strategy blog
Yar. There should be a mutiny then.