If I tempt x amount of people into watching the show, do I get a coupon for a free Blizzard at Dairy Queen?

No.

But you do get a free treat from Cold Stone Creamery. Dairy Queen (which I love) is so 70s.

Well, are we talking about FOX putting together the referrer program, or The Tim Minear Fund for Little Wanderer Fans?

I think Tim should do it. We gave him his own thread, after all.

Payback time!

What's a good Nielson rating? And when does this thing premiere again?

Is there a Who song left that Jerry Bruckheimer hasn't robbed of its dignity?

"Pictures of Lilly('s slingbacks)"

"Pictures of Lilly('s slingbacks)"

I used to wake up in the morning
I used to feel so bad
I got so sick of having sleepless nights
I went and told my dad

What a great song.

I think Bruckheimer is trying to decide whether to use it for the Joycelyn Elders or the Paul Reubens biopic. Tough choice, too.

What a great song.

It is. Let us not forget Entwhistle's entirely evocative French horn solo either.

What's a good Nielson rating? And when does this thing premiere again?

CSI got a 15.9 last week, and Apprentice got a 9.5.

But what really matters is how the show was sold. FOX will make a guestimate at the expected number of people who will watch based on past performance, wishful thinking, and whether the fourth house of Saturn is in Capricorn. It's all very scientific and involves throwing chicken bones into a blessed fire.

They will tell the advertisers taht they expect to score a 7.6 rating amongst boys who like video games and wet t-shirt contests, and women who buy SUVs with DVD players for their one spoiled, soon-to-be-fucked-up-kid.

Advertisers pay x-amount of money based on those numbers. If it scores a 7.6 or above, that's GREAT! Means the show is doing what it is expected to do and making the money required to continue on. A little below is pretty okay, too, because the network firgures the audience could grow. They'll watch every week, see if the numbers decline, stay steady, or grow a bit.

Also have to watch whether the numbers decline at the half, which, like in the case of Firefly says to the network that people tuned in and lost interest, which is what I think really killed it.

ETA: And I don't know when it will premiere. Which makes my eyeballs itch.

You'd have to discount how good The Inside is to just brush it aside as unable to take a chunk of CSI's audience.

Not at all. Wonderfalls was great; quality was not the issue when it was canceled. Now you can say that comparing CSI to Wonderfalls is comparing apples to oranges, but unless I completely missed your argument you are saying that there's enough similarity between CSI and The Inside that it's more a comparison between types of apples and that the 20 million Red Delicious lovers who watch the former contain a bunch of Macintosh lovers who'd be delighted to switch to the latter. And you're almost certainly right. The question is, how big does that chunk of Macintosh lovers need to be to satisfy Fox?

If The Inside grabs 5 million viewers then CSI goes from a top 2 program to a lower-top 10 show. Some of the O.C. audience (roughly 7 million viewers) will watch either CSI or the Apprentice. For the sake of argument (yes, I'm making up the numbers that follow), and ease of computation, let's say that 2 million OC/CSI watchers stick around for The Inside, but a million Apprentice watchers leave. So we have 6 million of the 7 million tuning in, plus 3 million more disgruntled CSI watchers (the 5 mil posited above minus the overlap 2 million), which makes 9 million and which would have put it at #16 last week. Hard to imagine Fox not being happy with that.

But say another million OC watchers don't tune in for whatever reason, that would drop it into the 20s. Of course it would still a) add viewers to the OC lead in, and b) be better ratings than what Point Pleasant is getting. Is Fox happy then? That's the wild card in the whole scenario: what are the network's hopes/expectations for the show, and how much institutional support are they willing to give it to see that it meets them? If it's an immediate hit it will be kept around whether the network PTBs believe in it or not. If it needs the opportunity to "find an audience" then the network's support is indispensable. Here's hoping it gets it.

I always resort to food comparisons, and CSI has the sort of salty reliability of a bowl of chicken soup. It's fulfilling and familiar, but given the choice between that and a rich slab of prime rib...

Funny that you use that analogy given my earlier reference to last year's election. It made me think of this Times Magazine article from last fall comparing two restaurants in New Martinsville, WV. Will Fox be happy with a Baristas or does it want a franchise to rival Bob Evans/CSI?

When networks sell advertising, they pretty much guarantee a certain share. If the show doesn't bring in the guaranteed share, they have a make-goods clause in the contract and they end up having to refund a portion of the fee paid by the advertiser. Networks don't wanna give money back.