That said, as I wrote above, there was little to write about FNL. It had terrible ratings and its survival was 100% dependent on a check from DirecTV, and that was the case all season long, so there really wasn’t much new to say about it on a week to week basis.

I KNEW you guys were doing so many of those titles, and articles for that reason!

Geez, do you have some kind of Vendetta against Merlin or somethin??

Somewhere in my archives I have a copy of Bart Man on VHS.

The clip of Do the Bartman, the song MJ wrote for Bart back in ‘91.

Merlin got the same treatment as Virtuality got being played on an even worse night Friday this past week. I think the commercial networks are just burning product to show when they have air time they don’t care about. The less they promote it the less they lose if it doesn’t perform well. End of story.

Lizard

Unlike Zap2it, we don’t really spend any time writing about average viewership (except when we lack anything else, as is typical with historical numbers) because it doesn’t matter to the advertising revenue or the future prospects of individual shows or networks. It’s akin to saying the Giants had the best batting average in the game last night. Interesting to some (that’s why we put it in the tables), but not particularly meaningful. Many TV trade sites (and print publications) ignore average viewership entirely.

As for no Friday Night Lights headlines for Friday overnight reports, spring Fridays were all about Dollhouse and Terminator, they’d each drive 10x the traffic to the sight that FNL fans would. And we correctly surmised early on that FNL ratings, in particular, were meaningless as a predictor. It was only coming back if DirecTV wrote another check (which they did), but we had no way of guessing what DTV would do.

And it’s not your headline I really have a problem with. Though I think focusing on the positive may be good, like: Simpson’s Jackson tribute fuels Fox to demo win. Or if you want to go with the non-reruns, perhaps something like: Merlin, Impact drop on slow summer Sunday.

Basically, I would have liked more thought in the analysis than “Merlin nearly perfected its vanishing act.”

If I ran the site (which I dont want to do because you guys generally do an amazing job), I would have done something more similar to zap2it’s write-up about the ratings:
http://www.zap2it.com/tv/ratings/zap-tv-ratings-062809,0,6021208.story

And then I would have supplemented that eventually with a separate write-up about if summer co-productions or direct imports work out financially for networks, despite low ratings. Or if a rerun or just a new reality show (which could be expensive) is better. Maybe also a write-up of “Should broadcast TV give-up in June?”

And I agree this show is sort of meaningless for NBC, I was more trying to get to the question of since BBC reupped the show regardless what it does in America, what does that mean for NBC’s future decisions? Should they be promoting it more, since they can get episodes at a very cheap rate in the future? I know some viewers shun new shows because they will be canceled within a few shows… it wont be the case for this one and will probably live for several seasons overseas. Other good question: Would this be a better show on SyFy, which has rebranded to include fantasy shows?

Anway, just putting in my two cents. Not really trying to slam your write-up. This was way more than I ever wanted to comment on the stupid show.

We’ll have more complete cable show numbers for the week ending Sunday tomorrow morning.

And I am well aware that NBC claims to be managing for margins, and I applaud that in general, but the problem is that since their financial information is so buried within GE’s reporting we’ll just have to take their word for how well they’re doing on those margins!

As for Merlin in particular, it’s a meaningless show, certainly meaningless to the future of NBCU, and not a very interesting case at all to me. It’s a cheap summer time filler that couldn’t do much better than Dateline. In relative terms, nobody cared about last night’s Merlin ratings. I’m fairly certain that it was crushed in the demo last night by both In Plain Sight and Law & Order: Criminal Intent on USA.

As for the post headline, I’ve got to write something, and it was either Merlin, Impact, or Just for Laughs. What would you have gone with?

I know this is a site about ratings, but it seems like “ratings” and “money” can’t really be separated… you can write headlines all you want as having “horrible ratings” but that story gets old and is simplistic in this day-in-age. It’s more interesting to delve into trying to figure out the net benefit for each show for the networks.

Especially as NBC execs have said over and over again they are managing for margins, not ratings. It may be worthwhile and interesting to read, in regards to their mantra, how this show is doing for them. Maybe even better than how this show is doing based on aging standards.

That said, I think Merlin is a really interesting case. Fairly popular in England and shown across the world to mediocre results… what does that mean for the future of the show in general and for NBC Universal? A much better story in my opinion.

But yes. Not great ratings. Seems like there’s more to the story though. At least your site didn’t say nobody cared about the night’s ratings…

“Just For Laughs has no subtitles because of the FCC. FCC regulates that foreign shows and foreign language shows must be either muted or dubbed if they want to be aired, NO SUBTITLES….

“But as for the FCC regulating languages, the only way you can get around it is get a special license that shows you are going to be airing in a foreign language, which is what all Spanish networks have. ABC just doesn’t have it because they’re an English speaking network.”

What, pray tell, gave you these ideas?

The fact that pretty much every show airing on US broadcast TV during the summer is cheap and has unknowably low expectations means that (like unscripted shows during the regular season) I don’t try and predict these shows futures.

So, I won’t be writing “Merlin’s doomed!”, but I will likely be writing some version of “Merlin’s ratings suck!” again and again during the summer

But as for the FCC regulating languages, the only way you can get around it is get a special license that shows you are going to be airing in a foreign language, which is what all Spanish networks have. ABC just doesn’t have it because they’re an English speaking network.

never even heard of it before now. (obviously wasn’t the only one…)