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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Allyson, I'd say putting bridges between, and also before, your linked ideas is a good idea. Right now, to open, you've got

Fans sometimes make the mistake that they are consumers of television shows. The viewers are actually bait for the real consumers, the advertisers.

I'd give that a couple of bridges, something along the lines of. "There's a common mistake in the minds of many television viewers: they think they're the end market, the consumers. (paragraph, a new paragraph, with a bridge) The reality is, in the minds of the (insert whoever, network, producer, whoever is in charge), the viewer is actually bait for the real consumers: the advertisers. (paragraph) 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 an explanation.

Not sure if I'm even remotely clear, there.

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I'm not sure I buy that the advertisers are the consumers of the television shows

And yet. They are.

Thanks for the help guys.I know where to tighten it and what to lose.

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It still certainly looks like something I want to read.

The fishing metaphor is getting a bit muddled too.

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.

How about "Networks create shows they think will attract a certain demographic and cast them out into the sea of viewers. 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 piece of audience fish."

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Thanks for the suggestion, but I gotsa write all by myself. Will rework it over lunch, simplify, repost to see if I can make it all less muddled.

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Art education

Classical music was boring. Long. Not much of a melody. It was supposed to *mean* something, too, and I didn't hear it.

Music 101, or, Beat Culture into the Heads of Freshmen. Easy grade, say something good about Mozart or Beethoven and pass. Auditorium full of slouching people catching up on their sleep.

"This is by Smetana, The Moldau."

My feet hit the floor as my mind surrendered to the sound.

The professor grinned when I demanded after class that he play it again.

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Thanks for the suggestion, but I gotsa write all by myself.

I end up suggesting alternate wordings because I'm lousy at explaining what I think should happen to someone else's work. I'm just trying to explain what I mean, not saying "There are the words you should use."

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What Ginger said

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Hell yes. Allyson, any and every suggestion I will ever make on anyone's work is prefaced by "maybe something like", to illustrate an idea, rather than a wording.

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Connie, that's pretty much the same reaction I had to The Moldau, when I first heard it as a college freshman. It's still one of my favorite pieces of music.

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