Of interviews and ratings and bad trackers!

[katikat]

There is a new interview with Eric Kripke over on TV Guide's web site. There's nothing really spoilery there - at least in my opinion - if you don't consider things like "lower budget for S4" spoilery, that is :)

There are some awesome things in the interview though... Quoting:

So in Season 4, (...) we'll be presenting it in our scruffy, angsty, Supernatural way, and we'll return to concentrating on the relationships and the characters. Does that basically mean the return to S1? No flashy gore, more low budget scare? *crosses fingers*

But if the fans overwhelmingly reject something, over and over and over, on every website, we tend to pay attention to that. Again, I want to stress, it never alters the core story and central mythology;... Awesome. I just hope that they did apply it to one chick by the name Bela Talbot and they will kick her butt out of the show *nods*

---

Ratings for Monday...
Gossip Girl: last week (repeat) 1.29 mil.; this week (new) 2.44 mil.
One Tree Hill: last week (new) 2.72 mil.; this week (new) 2.82 mil.
Bones: last week (new) 8.54 mil.; this week (new) 8.64 mil.
House: last week (nothing); this week (repeat) 8.04 mil.

Ouch for GoGi. I mean, all that money thrown into soft porn ads, fans miffed for them taking their show from down from streaming on their site... and for nothing. These ratings are horrible. And even after such a huge campaign, they're almost the same like the last airing's on Jan 9th - 2.34 mil. viewers...

ETA: This is ridiculous...

According to Marc Berman from The Programming Insider, the CW's spin on GoGi's ratings is: The return of Gossip Girl, paired with original episodes of One Tree Hill to create our new night of drama, gave us our best Monday EVER in adults 18-34 (2.0/6) and women 18-34 (3.0/8)... From 8-10, The CW was second in women 18-34 (3.0/8) and first in female teens (3.0/9).

Do they even realize how ludicrous they sound? "Yeah, nobody actually watched us but we had the most teenage viewers!" O.o I'm not slanting the show itself, just the spin on the ratings they give it. Come on, this is the least watched full hour show on the CW and they still present it like a hit!

ETA2: And if you want to read a hymn on GoGi take a look at this: The Genius of Gossip Girl. I wonder how much the CW paid for that article...

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Lately, I've been having tough time downloading stuff. Some of the downloads from eztv don't work for me at all. And I can't download anything from a.scarywater, the main torrent site for anime. It tells me "10060; Operation timed out". I went looking for what that means and the web sites told me that basically, the tracker is busy and it kicked me out. Great. So, I have no way to download anime at all now because only Shinsen, aarinfantasy and some smaller subbers don't use this site *sigh*

Comments

[ckll.livejournal.com]

Kripke never forgets what the center or probably who are the heroes of the story :)

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I really hope so. And I hope he won't turn Sam and Dean against each other next season. That would miff me like hell! X(

[ckll.livejournal.com]

If he does, it will temporary

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

It's so nice to have a non-spoilery interview, one I don't have to run and hide from but can actually read and enjoy!

Does that basically mean the return to S1? No flashy gore, more low budget scare? *crosses fingers*
Oh, that would be so nice. So many of us have been waxing nostalgic about season one lately! As much as I love the way the show has grown and developed, there was something so haunting and evocative about the season one spirits that isn't really recaptured these days, and I've love to have it back.

Bela is so frustrating. Her entire arc so far could have been wrapped up in two fleeting appearances: one to introduce the character and the other to steal the Colt. Everything else has been unecessary and forced and done nothing but make fans hate her. She's been really badly handled, and it's disappointing - I really thought they'd learned valuable lessons from the Roadhouse crew. Plus, having two extra regular characters contracted, even for half a season rather than a full season, costs valuable money that they just don't have the budget for!

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I really do hope that they cut Bela out. If they get less money, one more regular could prove to be way too much. And I wouldn't mind if they downgraded Cassidy from regular to recurring. That could save them money too. But he promised to go back to characters and their stories so I hope that it'll be more about Sam and Dean and their relationship and them investigating than huge flashy battles. Because they spent a lot of money on Mag7 and just the usual budget on Jus in Belo and I definitely liked JiB better *nods*

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

If they get less money, one more regular could prove to be way too much.

Regular actors (and producers! and writers!) contracts aren't included in the per-episode budget, only guest stars and extras are. It's one of the (delightfully sneaky!) advantages of hiring regulars! :D Cassidy is a recurring regular - if they took away her regular status, not only would they run into the problem of not having her whenever they want her, they'd have to include her in the episode budget.

Apart from that, actors are very cheap. Numerous times, I've seen producers talk about how hiring people is always easier, 'cause they're the cheapest part of an episode (one CW producer was even quoted as saying ALL the guest stars in any given episode of his totaled a mere $25,000 - in an episode budget of nearly $2 million, that's hardly a thing ...).

[katikat.livejournal.com]

Yup, in ep-to-ep budget maybe but they cut their seasonal budget. So that means less money overall. But as long as I get lotsa Sam and Dean and schmoopy brotherly love, I will be happy :)

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

The budget they're speaking of is the episode budget. :) Part of the reason it goes down every year is to offset the way all the contracts rise - the expensive people are the producers, and their contracts rise exponentially every year. There's no way around this - The CW can't lessen the amount they receive until their contracts are up (typically 7 years), so there's no such thing as a budget cut there. Contracts aren't included in the budget at all - partly because that's handled through the production company, Warner Brothers Television, who also takes part (if not all) of the burden of the contracts financially. (See! Sneaky!)

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

I'm...really clueless about how the budgeting of TV shows works, really. I just resent that money has had to be spent on shoehorning Bela into episodes where she didn't belong and that just made her look bad, instead of on classic rock and all the other areas they've had to cut back this season.

Meh. JiB definitely worked better than M7.

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

Hee. Gore is low budget scare! :D

As for the Monday ratings, well, of course The CW is going to shout from the rooftops about Adults 18-34 - that's their target demographic, after all, and those numbers actually are very good, and they're exactly why shows like Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill will have the highest ad rates next season (i.e., they'll be making the most money based on how much advertisers are paying The CW to show their ads). Advertisers love that demographic, and they pay the most for it. Doesn't matter which network a show's on - CW, NBC, ABC - if you're hitting that demo, you're getting the big bucks.

Which is why, I hate to say it, but the total viewers don't matter so much. If two shows both get 3 million viewers, and one has a 2.0 in A18-34 while the other has a 1.2, the first is probably earning five times as much in ad dollars. Even if the first show actually has 2.5 million viewers and the second has 3.5!

Apart from that, this is a significant improvement for The CW on Mondays, even in total viewers. The comedy block had been crashing hard for a while ...

[katikat.livejournal.com]

He, I would do with dark corridors and some creepy shadows rather than with buckets of fake blood XP

With the demo, true. But it's funny that the CW comes up with those declarations only when their overall ratings are ridiculous. They are so covering their butts XD

Well, these shows are doing better than the comedies. On the other hand, their comedies are now being slaughtered on Sunday night. Like totally. Everybody Hates Chris dropped from approximately 2.30 mil. on Monday to 1.20 on Sunday. I wonder if the move was really worth it...

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

I prefer a healthy mix of it all myself! :D

Well, yeah, but on the inverse, if they were shouting about good total viewers while their demo numbers sucked, the advertisers would turn their noses up and think they're covering their butts in that case. :D Different perspectives, I guess - much like you, I'd rather have more total viewers than have the "right" viewers. But, you know. The All Important Media Buyers disagree - they want people who statistics say spend the most money on the products they want to sell. Frah.

Oh, yeah. Poor comedies. :( EHC ... man, you know that show debuted with over 7 million viewers? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

[misty-writes.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to ask this for a while now but I keep forgetting. Where do you get your ratings from?

I would LOVE if SPN returned back to the feel of S1.

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I get the ratings from the PiFeedback (http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/63310451) forum of the Programming Insider :)

[xtrek.livejournal.com]

Although I can't help you with the torrents from a.scarywater, I think a link to my favourite direct download site (free, no registration required) might help you out until you get bittorrent to work for you again. Here's the link: http://www.lolipower.org/ (You'll need to use Firefox to see the site though. For downloads just select one of the servers from the tabs. New anime can be found on S, continuing series on D and complete series on E.)

[katikat.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link. Wow, how can they sustain the bandwidth? O.O

I wonder what's wrong with the torrents. It's not my firewall (I allowed the 443 tracker), it's not the qTorrent (I tried bittornado too)... It's quite annoying, let me tell you X(

[xtrek.livejournal.com]

lol, the download speed is pretty good, isn't it? On days were big name series (mainly Code Geass R2 on Sundays) are released it might be difficult to get a download slot, but during the week it's great.

I tried the a.scarywater site earlier and I don't see anything wrong with the tracker either. I can download the torrent files without any problems. Maybe it's just a temporary glitch. Have you tried getting the torrents from other pages like http://www.tokyotosho.com ?

[katikat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I did. And it doesn't work either. I have no idea what's going on but it's so frustrating!

[xtrek.livejournal.com]

yep, I know that those situations can be frustrating as hell. I couldn't access the jpopsuki tracker for a few days last week. Looks like it wasn't my fault since it works fine now and I managed to get my torrent files (while I still couldn't access the tracker page) via email from a friend. So, if you're looking for something just let me know and I'll try to help you out.