Fans sometimes make the mistake that they are consumers of television shows. (This sentence bugs me. Make it stop bugging me)The viewers are actually bait for the real consumers, the advertisers. People hawking laundry soap, douches, and/or sport utility vehicles purchase time from networks to advertise their products and services to the audience watching a television program.

A teevee show is just a shiny lure to get millions of people to watch commercials. The network baits a hook with a group of viewers called a demographic. The most precious demographic is 18-40 year-old males, who supposedly have the most disposable income and are therefore the most delicious bait to hungry advertisers. So networks create shows that will appeal to a certain demographic, and then roll the dice. The network tells the advertiser that the television program will attract a few million viewers in a coveted demographic. The advertiser buys a minute or two of commercial time from the network in anticipation of chomping on a tasty bit of the audience.

The cost of making and marketing a show must break even, or be less than the amount of money advertisers pay for their commercial minutes in order for the show to be a success. If the demographic the network promised doesn’t tune into the show, the advertisers get pissed off and find another baited hook to provide nourishment. Fans aren’t the top of the food chain, we’re worms. Advertisers are the fish, networks are the fishermen, and the network’s shareholders are the giant squid who comes up from the depths of the murky sea to eat the boat, fishermen, and anything in a 50 yard radius.

Now before you get all paranoid and think that the FOX network has a spycam in your house to guage what you watch and whether you’re clicking through the commercials, let me explain the concept of Nielsen boxes. Nielsen is a company that takes a statistical measurement of television viewers in the US and abroad. There are “hundreds of thousands of Nielsen Families” according to the Nielsen website. People with Nielsen boxes and diaries decide what the rest of us watch. Every morning, the Nielsen ratings are posted, and advertisers can check to see whether the networks have delivered the demographics they promised.

When the network isn’t delivering, television shows get canceled. Critical acclaim does not matter. It doesn’t matter if four million 20-year-olds with a lust for Sega games tuned in to a show if the network promised six million of them. Your favorite television show can get axed if four Nielsen families all get together for a game of mini-golf and shut off their sets two Fridays in a row during a “sweeps” week, when Nielsen provides the most detailed data, pretty much.

What were we talking about? Oh. Firefly.

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Fans sometimes make the mistake that they are consumers of television shows. (This sentence bugs me. Make it stop bugging me)

The mistake is in thinking that they are consumers, and the sentence should say so. Maybe "Fans sometimes make the mistake of thinking that they are the consumers of TV shows."

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Fans sometimes make the mistake that they are consumers of television shows. (This sentence bugs me. Make it stop bugging me)

Fans sometimes mistakenly believe that they are the consumers of television shows?

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Lee make head stop hurt. Lee good.

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I'd leave out the "sometimes." Make it real direct: "Fans believe they are the customers of TV shows. They're wrong. The customers the networks care about are the advertisers."

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Fans sometimes make the mistake that they are consumers of television shows. (This sentence bugs me. Make it stop bugging me)

"Fans sometimes mistakenly believe they are consumers of television shows." (Ha! x-post with Hil, though I've been conditioned to eliminate unnecessary "that"s. And Susan, I thought about nixing the sometimes too, but I wasn't sure if she wanted to make the blanket statement.)

guage

gauge

What were we talking about? Oh. Firefly.

Hee hee hee. That's great.

I like the metaphor you set up, but it becomes really muddled. You refer to the viewers as bait, and then the show as a lure, and then the fans as worms. And in your worm -> fish -> fishermen setup, the show doesn't figure into it at all, just the network. Also, I'm not sure I buy that the advertisers are the consumers of the television shows; what I expected was for you to say that we're not the consumers of the shows, we're the consumers of the products being advertised.

The last two paragraphs are solid, but the first three are somewhat confusing, even though I understand your overall point.

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New drabble topic! Challenge #26 (lies we tell ourselves) is now closed. This week's challenge (#27) is a two-option challenge -- you may pick one or the other, or both if you wish.

Topic #1: Write a personals ad for a famous work of art (painting, sculpture, etc.) that's looking for its ideal viewer.

Topic #2: Art education. Interpret that however you will. Doesn't have to be a class, by any means.

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Also, with the "roll the dice" in the second paragraph, you end up with two different metaphors going on at once, and it gets kind of hard to follow.

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Also, with the "roll the dice" in the second paragraph, you end up with two different metaphors going on at once, and it gets kind of hard to follow.

Yeah, I caught that too. Though maybe she could invoke the image of gamblin', hard drinkin' fishermen.

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Fans sometimes make the mistake that they are consumers of television shows. (This sentence bugs me. Make it stop bugging me)

Maybe it's got too much of passive voice, and that's why it's bugging?

You might be burying your lead, too. This:

Fans aren’t the top of the food chain, we’re worms. Advertisers are the fish, networks are the fishermen, and the network’s shareholders are the giant squid who comes up from the depths of the murky sea to eat the boat, fishermen, and anything in a 50 yard radius.

seems to me, to be the real point, and can be worked in the introduction.

How about reconfiguring this passage, such that you start out with something like...

Fans often fail to recognize our true place on the TV-Advertiser food chain. We are not at the top. We are worms--bait. Advertisers are the fish, networks are the fishermen, and the network’s shareholders are the giant squid who comes up from the depths of the murky sea to eat the boat, fishermen, and anything in a 50 yard radius. The real consumers are the advertisers. People hawking laundry soap, douches, and/or sport utility vehicles purchase time from networks to advertise their products and services to the audience watching a television program.

Then go onto the rest, with the appropriate adjustments...

A teevee show is just a shiny lure to get millions of people to watch commercials. The network baits a hook with a group of viewers called a demographic. The most precious demographic is 18-40 year-old males, who supposedly have the most disposable income and are therefore the most delicious bait to hungry advertisers. So networks create shows that will appeal to a certain demographic, and then roll the dice. The network tells the advertiser that the television program will attract a few million viewers in a coveted demographic. The advertiser buys a minute or two of commercial time from the network in anticipation of chomping on a tasty bit of the audience.

The cost of making and marketing a show must break even, or be less than the amount of money advertisers pay for their commercial minutes in order for the show to be a success. If the demographic the network promised doesn’t tune into the show, the advertisers get pissed off and find another baited hook to provide nourishment.

Now before you get all paranoid and think that the FOX network has a spycam in your house to guage what you watch and whether you’re clicking through the commercials, let me explain the concept of Nielsen boxes. Nielsen is a company that takes a statistical measurement of television viewers in the US and abroad. There are “hundreds of thousands of Nielsen Families” according to the Nielsen website. People with Nielsen boxes and diaries decide what the rest of us watch. Every morning, the Nielsen ratings are posted, and advertisers can check to see whether the networks have delivered the demographics they promised.

When the network isn’t delivering, television shows get canceled. Critical acclaim does not matter. It doesn’t matter if four million 20-year-olds with a lust for Sega games tuned in to a show if the network promised six million of them. Your favorite television show can get axed if four Nielsen families all get together for a game of mini-golf and shut off their sets two Fridays in a row during a “sweeps” week, when Nielsen provides the most detailed data, pretty much.

What were we talking about? Oh. Firefly.

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