United States TV is run on a stupid, outdated, system called the Nielsen Ratings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings). As I understand it a statistically significant amount of people are chosen to have their TV viewing data collected and from that data TV shows are rated. So it's pretty much polling but for TV shows. What's dumb is that the Nielsen system obviously doesn't include any online viewership (which is a growing medium of watching shows especially among the younger generations), I've heard that watching a show on DVR only counts towards the ratings if you watch it within like 2-3 days, and I'm not sure how it handles DVR OnDemand viewership.
From what I've heard Forever was really high in online viewership, playback viewership, and OnDemand viewership all of wouldn't count towards it's ratings.
Personally I think it was in a terrible slot. It was up against Person of Interest on CBS and Chicago Fire or something on NBC both of which were established shows with an established viewership. CBS also had NCIS, and NCIS: New Orleans on at in the 2 time slots before Forever and they are both hugely popular. Forever had Agents of SHIELD as it's lead-in which didn't do much better than Forever and I would the audiences would be widely different.
I think the issue with Forever was money not so much popularity. Forever did better in its time slot than any show ABC has had for the past few years. I really don't know how the money side works but I'm pretty sure that Forever was made by a Warner Bros. company so ABC had to pay Warner for the show and I think that can get expensive.
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tenement-funster
8 years ago
TV companies aren't happy about counting DVR figures because they know that by and large you're fast-forwarding the commercials. If commercial investors know that people are just whizzing through their ads, they're not going to bother handing over any money. They're interested primarily in bums on seats for that first airing, on the television, where commercials have to be watched.
In practice, of course, even then they can't be sure that their investment will bear fruit, as people go to make a cup of tea/channel hop/visit the bathroom/whatever whilst the ads are running. But it's the best that the advertising companies can hope for.
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I find concussion quite invigorating.
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lelandB
8 years ago
One of the reasons you are seeing more and more product placement in the programming. You do not fast forward through the program.
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paladinj
8 years ago
ABC has never won the timeslot Forever was in. The ironic thing about it was that CBS cancelled Person of Interest and ordered an abbreviated season to wrap it up. If they had announced that during the season, Forever's numbers would probably have been much better.
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