Its link to the Playboy franchise aside, The Playboy Club’s demise is likely due to the fact that it could not fulfill its promise to deliver a period workplace drama similar in quality to AMC’s Mad Men. In early press about the fall premiere season, The Playboy Club was frequently linked to ABC’s Pan Am and both were pegged as Mad Men replicas. To differentiate themselves from Mad Men, both promised to highlight women’s empowerment in 1960s America. To this end, NBC framed the workplace at the center of The Playboy Club as one “Where the men hold the key but the women run the show.” ABC similarly suggested that the women of Pan Am “do it all and they do it at 30,000 feet.” Given The Playboy Club’s cancellation and Pan Am’s drop in ratings, both shows’ visions of “empowerment” haven’t convincingly mobilized the past to capture contemporary viewers’ interest.

The Playboy Club and Pan Am follow the personal and professional lives of young, beautiful, (mostly) white single women who work for their financial independence and explore their sexual desires. Despite the glitz and glam of their jobs, the women in both shows work in equally regimented workplaces that use humiliating inspections to insure adherence to sexist costuming and grooming requirements. In both shows women are harassed and humiliated by male superiors, coworkers, and clients. These occurrences are difficult to watch, yet are important to the plots of programs that truly wish to explore gender roles and women’s empowerment—past or present. Here’s where both shows disappoint: instead of exploring how lead female characters’ alliances and ambitions help them overcome their challenges, the shows’ characters spend most of their time dallying in fairly traditional (and less controversial) romances and sexual exploits. As a result, it’s difficult to tell if the shows’ portrayals of women are empowering or demeaning.

The failures of The Playboy Club and Pan Am raise the question of why we turn to period television, especially post-Mad Men. Do we want a rose-colored view of the past? A smug assurance that we’ve progressed far from these times? Or do we simply wish to imagine what it was like “back then”? Mad Men’s strength has been its ability to encourage us to see the links between our past and our present—something that its imitators (at least this season) failed to replicate. Without this, the copycat shows succeeded at recreating the veneer of the original, but omitted the social commentary at its core. To be fair, Mad Men‘s complexity developed with time and at its best delivers an audience not much bigger than The Playboy Club or Pan Am. Ironically, in all three shows time figures prominently, yet The Playboy Club and Pan Am no longer have the time necessary to develop their stories.

1. With indie movie theaters fighting for their lives against the big chains, and indie distributors continuing to struggle for profits, some argue the future of independent films lies in video-on-demand, a route which Lars Von Trier’s new film Melancholia is trying out (just don’t ask Von Trier to comment on it). Netflix may or may not be the future for indies (at least one indie filmmaker likely feels definitely not). Maybe the future lies in serving booze, like at the Alamo Drafthouse, which is looking into new LA and NY outlets. They can save time by not looking into Utah, where a theater got fined for serving alcohol during a film deemed sexually explicit (The Hangover Part II. For real.).

2. Hollywood films are increasingly getting the video-on-demand and online release treatment, with Paramount making the latest Transformers movie available to rent on its own website and UltraViolet finally launching next week with Horrible Bosses. But while those films have had standard theatrical windows, Universal is poking the theater owner hornet’s nest by planning to release Tower Heist on VOD only three weeks after its theatrical debut. The Cinemark chain says it will refuse to screen the film in protest, but Will Richmond says the VOD charge for the film – $59.99! – is likely to make it a flop anyway.

3. None of these Hollywood stories are related, but they all interest me so they all get included: Lions Gate STILL can’t shake Carl Icahn, the MPAA reversed a content rating ruling on an upcoming drama, most of the Hurt Locker file-sharing defendants are off the hook, religion-focused films are on the rise, the foreign language Oscar race already has its usual share of controversy, a woman is suing Drive’s distributor for false advertising and racism (no, really), and the Academy might finally build a film museum in LA (no, really).

4. iTunes is spreading even further across Europe, and Apple is also working on global cloud-music rights. Rhapsody has acquired Napster in a bid to better compete with Spotify, and in Sweden, music piracy has dropped since Spotify arrived, illustrating that people are willing to pay if the service is worth it (and overall sales in the US happen to be up this year), while one new label is going to give out its music for free.

5. Nielsen scoured social media to come up with a list of the top 20 video games on holiday wish lists. Music video games are no longer high on such lists, though Rock Band is still picking up likes. Not picking up likes is Bill Bennett, who says gaming is destroying our country’s manhood.

6. Magazines are having to adapt to the mobile age. Spin, for one, is reducing its print run and expanding its online presence. Others are trying to get on board with the Kindle Fire. But one expert argues magazines might ultimately see their lifeblood – advertising – threatened by Facebook. Apparently Vogue is doing something right, because it’s been named Ad Age’s Magazine of the Year. (Apparently magazines don’t do much from October through December.)

7. Twitter is either doing well: over a thousand more advertisers on board than last year and ad revenue predicted to grow by 210%. Or it’s falling apart: internally it’s a mess and morale is low. A lengthy NY Mag profile of the company fittingly notes that anxiety and optimism are found in equal measure at the company. Maybe Twitter can measure it own mood as well as it can the world’s.

8. Tumblr is the latest social media success story, now with more page views than Wikipedia and valued at $800 million. It’s no Facebook, which is now as big as the internet itself was in 2004 (but not as big in Brazil as it is in Singapore and elsewhere globally), but it’s making more noise than Google+, which claims that it’s a good thing there doesn’t appear to be a lot of action going on there.

9. Google is huge. Amazon is huge. Delicious is redesigned. Chrome is catching up. Open Range is dying. Diggnation is dead.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors (@N4TVM) posts from the past two weeks: Canadian Cancellation, BBC Cuts, Behind TOLN, Fox News Reflection, Hulu’s Problem, Future of TV Report, MTV Remade, Spectrum Fight, The ESPN Dilemma, Cable A La Carte, More Screens Are Better, GLAAD Report,  FX Ad Drama, News Study.

1. There was a ton of Netflix-related news the past few weeks, the biggest being the House of Cards deal, which you can catch up on via the @N4TVM link below. Otherwise (*deep breath*): Netflix controls about 60% of the market for digital movies; digital distribution is killing DVDs, and Netflix appears to be piling on with its iPad app; consumers seem to prefer streaming rentals over download sales; Amazon is the new upstart; Facebook is also dipping a toe into this arena with some Warner Bros. rentals, but Netflix isn’t scared by this, nor should it be, really, plus Netflix is even testing integration with Facebook accounts; Netflix has been hit with a class-action lawsuit involving customer privacy; Netflix has a deal with Nintendo for the 3DS; Hollywood sees Netflix largely as a disruptor and may try to destroy it (hmm…that sounds familiar to film industry historians), which makes it even more enticing that Netflix’s streaming contracts with the studios expire soon, including the unique deal with Starz (and also just as Netflix’s streaming costs are declining); and finally, maybe UltraViolet will be the long-term studio answer to Netflix’s challenge, but in the short-term, Andrew Wallenstein recommends a premium VOD war. Last-minute bonus link: The Economist lays out all the threats to Hollywood’s home-entertainment business.

2. The major Hollywood studios have had mixed profitability results over the past year (they apparently need to study our brains more). Studio profits won’t be helped by state plans to heavily curb Hollywood tax credits, though some Californians are defending the economic value of theirs. AOL is trying to stay relevant by courting Hollywood, and if Huffington Post bloggers don’t like working for free for AOL, they can at least be glad they’re not working for the Weinstein brothers. (Special bonus link: Box Office Magazine has opened up its vast archives for free access.)

3. Christopher Dodd has been named MPAA chairman, so now he gets to tackle (ignore) the complaints (proof) that the MPAA ratings board is biased against independent producers. Beyond the US, there are a number of films dealing with content objections, including A Serbian Film (*MPAA ratings board explodes*). The British will soon get to see (allegedly) riskier films now that Robert Redford is launching a mini-Sundance festival in London. Sundance and Tribeca are also both looking online for distribution possibilities, plus there’s the new website Fandor, a Netflix for indies trying to foster an online social community around independent film (MPAA ratings board members need not apply).

4. You probably heard about the House voting to defund NPR, but a closer look reveals that the bill doesn’t technically defund NPR per se (NPR, the parent organization, doesn’t get direct federal funding). Instead, the bill forbids NPR’s member stations, such as Missouri’s KCRU, from spending their federal funds on NPR’s national programming and dues. But the bill is unlikely to get through the Senate anyway, so this largely boils down to politicians playing to their bases (with the pointlessness of the endeavor mocked effectively by Rep. Anthony Weiner). But while the vote indeed fell heavily along party lines, seven Republicans did vote against it, and another, Rep. Justin Amash, just voted “present” as a way to express his concern that the bill doesn’t actually reduce federal spending. Plus – hold onto your hats, hipsters – Sen. Saxby Chambliss was heard defending NPR (though he said it on an NPR station, so perhaps he was just being kind to his hosts). If you need a quick primer on some of the basic arguments surrounding NPR station funding: on one side, Sen. Jim DeMint explains why he thinks public broadcasting should go private, and Rick Green argues the government shouldn’t give handouts to the news media; on the other side, journalists Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser argue that NPR deserves support for filling a crucial gap in local news coverage, Rep. Jim Moran says federal funding is essential for the survival of NPR’s stations, and community activist Sally Kohn uses a dog as a visual aid to clarify just how much of a “budget saver” completely defunding NPR stations would be.

5. Spotify now has more subscribers than any paid music service in the world, and it’s staffing up for its US launch, which, as you know from reading the previous 10 or 20 WAYM posts, is going to happen any day now. Meanwhile, Apple is working on its cloud music service, and it may also soon offer unlimited downloads of purchased music on iTunes, while the digital music service Mog wants to get into your car (it’s “the Holy Grail,” says Mog’s founder, which makes me look at my little Ford Focus in a whole new way).

6. Ina Fried looks back on how Rovio managed to drum up $42 million in its first crack at venture funding, while the WSJ and ReadWriteWeb look ahead to the future for Rovio’s Angry Birds, and Rovio’s CEO predicts that console games are doomed by the dominance of social and mobile gaming. (By the way, did you get the Angry Birds St. Paddy’s Day update? More pigs than ever.) But Xbox just had a great sales month thanks to strong Kinect sales, Nintendo is pushing 3-D heavily, and PlayStation is looking to the cloud.

7. Google is drawing fire for favoring the company’s own sites with its search engine, discriminating against the blind with Google apps, and getting excessively favorable treatment in Britain, but it’s on the other side of accusations that an online video technology it backs has been unfairly smothered by tech rivals. Within Google’s corporate umbrella, YouTube is expanding its staff, and it has acquired one service that makes your videos better and another that makes better videos.

8. The Internet is up for a Nobel Peace Prize (woo The Internet!…wait, there are 241 nominations? Is LOLcats nominated too?). But don’t look for The Internet to win any presidential medals, as it hasn’t helped The American Economy grow as much as one would expect. You better not tell The Nobel Committee about the new .XXX domain designated for Porn Sites (or maybe that would help The Internet’s chances?). And you’d best not tell Anonymous if The Internet, or also-nominated Wikileaks, doesn’t win a Nobel, since The Nobel Committee is just about the only entity not under its attack yet.

9. Twitter is now five years old; Twitter Blog has some celebratory stats, and Funny or Die has a Ken Burns-style retrospective (with a bit of NSFW language). Five is the cute stage, but it’s also when kids have to learn the value of sharing, and Twitter is taking some chances with not playing nice with third-party apps, even as users show a preference for them. Perhaps a time-out is called for so Twitter can think about what it’s done.

10.  Some good News for TV Majors links from the past two weeks: Bachelor & Race, Netflix Deal Official, UK Retransmission, SCMS Follow-ups, BBC Analysis, News Collection, News News, Reality Beating Scripted, Japan Coverage, Hulu Originals, Aging Audience, Reference Risk, Upfronts Schedule.

The Game is a sitcom with a predominantly African American cast set in the world of a fictional professional football team.  When it premiered in 2006, it was paired up with Everybody Hates Chris, All of Us, and Girlfriends to develop a night of programming obviously intended to target African American viewers.  In a move reminiscent of Fox’s recruitment and then abandonment of the same audience once it had built itself into a competitor for the Big 3 broadcasters, The CW slowly but surely canceled each of these series, with The Game and Everybody Hates Chris the last ones standing when the ax fell in May of 2009.

The series did not go quietly–the stars put together a YouTube video encouraging fans to help them save the show, and the outraged fans were happy to comply, mounting a sizable internet protest,

For a while, things were looking grim. The 2009-2010 TV season came and went without any promising news, but the story of The Game was not yet over.  Although ratings were steadily dropping off at The CW, when BET began airing reruns of the series in February of 2009, they drew huge audiences–often garnering higher ratings in the BET re-airing than they did in the original showing on The CW, according to Daily Variety.  The reruns did so well for BET that the channel picked the series up in October 2010 and began shooting new episodes over a year after its original cancellation.

In some ways, The Game‘s move from The CW to BET makes institutional sense.  When the announcement about the syndication deal was made in February 2009, Daily Variety quoted BET’s VP of acquisitions: “Not only does it have really fresh African-American stars, but it has a great lineup of guest stars. People like Robin Givens and Vivica Fox — these are people who are regularly on our network.”  And there’s certainly no denying that a sitcom with a predominantly black cast can and likely will find a very happy home on BET, given its programming slate and audience profile.  In fact, the series might indeed do much better on BET than it ever did on The CW–which may well be due to the fact that The Game was not a priority for The CW, but will be a flagship series for BET.  For the series and its fans, this is certainly the best possible outcome.

But I’m not so sure The Game‘s happy ending is all that happy–or if it signals a dangerous shift in programming logic.  As The Root’s Erin E. Evans noted in 2009, “The recent cancellation of The Game and the also popular Everybody Hates Chris has drastically reduced the number of black faces on network television.”  She goes on to say that even if the series were resurrected on cable (as it now has been), it might set a dangerous precedent–and I think she’s right.  Do we really want to say that cable is the proper home for stories about non-white experiences and characters?  That broadcast audiences simply aren’t interested, and thus shouldn’t be offered these stories?  That audiences who find their own lives represented in series like The Game can find solace on cable?  That “broadcast” means “mainstream”, and “mainstream” means “white”?

I’m not sure I know the answer to these questions, but I do know that the startling dearth of non-white casts on broadcast television is something to which we should be paying attention, even as we celebrate and enjoy The Game’s second life on cable.

My heartfelt thanks and appreciation to two of my outstanding students, Kiara Sims and Ayriel Warren, for their superb projects on The Game last fall–I wouldn’t have been aware of this interesting and troubling situation otherwise.
Edited to add: please be sure to check out this Variety piece an this post from Aymar Jean Christian on the topic, now that the ratings results are in.

Disney’s announcement that it will be replacing cable channel SOAPnet with a new preschool channel has generated serious concerns for U.S. soap viewers.  When television institutions such as the CBS soaps Guiding Light and As the World Turns are getting canceled and ratings across the 7 soaps currently on air are averaging a 2.33, any change in the soaps’ distribution is worrying news.  But the impending disappearance of SOAPnet (which is still 18 months away) is a loss in a number of other ways, as well.

SOAPnet began in 2000 as a way for ABC-Disney to repurpose the broadcast network’s three daytime soaps.   The channel also included original programming (such as Soap Talk) and reruns of defunct daytime and prime time soaps.  In an era before the widespread distribution of TV on DVD, a cable channel willing to rerun such fare as Dallas and Knots Landing was a rarity.  Even more rare was SOAPnet’s airing of past daytime soaps, notably ABC’s Ryan’s Hope (SOAPnet has aired every episode from the 1975 debut to early 1981) and NBC’s Another World (the channel reran a swath of episodes from the 1990s).  In addition, SOAPnet would occasionally air retrospective episodes of current soaps.  In these ways, SOAPnet helped to preserve and perpetuate one of the most obscure of television’s archives, as daytime soaps are never rerun and never released on DVD.

SOAPnet’s archival contribution may have been its most significant offering for a soap historian like me, but for the broader public the channel offered an alternate venue for keeping up with the soaps, not only those on ABC, but also NBC’s Days of Our Lives and CBS’s The Young & the Restless, which struck deals with the channel to carry same-day and weekend repeats of currently airing episodes. These cable repeats have become many viewers’ chief mode of soap viewing and their loss will surely create a gap in those viewers’ TV experience, as many are attesting in light of the news.

In announcing the channel’s end, Disney executive Anne Sweeney explained that the rise of DVRs and multiplatform distribution have made SOAPnet a less crucial space for soap viewing than it once was.  This is no doubt true, as all of the currently airing soaps can now be streamed online, although this is a relatively recent development for some.  In fact, I long suspected that ABC was hesitant to make its soaps available online in an effort to protect SOAPnet’s ratings.  Of course, many soap viewers may not have DVRs or access to streaming video, so they may be lost entirely.  But the SOAPnet ratings were never part of the broadcast network ratings picture, and thus the loss of SOAPnet viewers should have no real effect on the broadcast numbers.

In addition, many soap viewers have long found SOAPnet to be a disappointment.  In recent years, the channel has moved further and further away from its daytime soap roots, picking up repeats of more and more prime time dramas and importing original fare from Canada as well as venturing into reality shows.  ABC executive Brian Frons has gotten a lot of flak from soap fans for his remarks about expanding the definition of “soap” in ways that seem to equate “soapy” with repeats of exploitation-level made-for-TV movies and cheap reality shows.

Still, SOAPnet has delivered a number of soap-related treasures over the years and for these I, for one, will sorely miss it.  From the original, prime time General Hospital spin-off GH: Night Shift (the second season of which I, and many others, loved) to repeats of such prime time rarities as Fox’s Pasadena (including many never-before-aired episodes) and such gems of daytime’s past as the 1970s Ryan’s Hope, SOAPnet offered something unique.  Its disappearance may not be any more deadly to the daytime soap genre than the many other challenges soaps are facing.  More troubling is the loss of SOAPnet’s potential—both as a player in the TV business and as an all too rare space for soaps to get their cultural due.

Case in point this year: NBC. NBC-bashing has been such a part of industry culture for so long, including from within the Peacock itself, that similar attacks on the other networks always feel secondhand. That said, the last several years have been a particularly satisfying bonanza for NBC anti-fans, as the network has had a scant few shows anyone really cared about, and an incredible string of self-inflicted wounds (from the hiring of Ben Silverman to the firing of Conan O’Brien). Thus, the story going on is of a network desperately trying to prove it still matters, with the added subplot of a looming and potentially game-changing corporate merger with Comcast.

NBC’s schedule, unveiled last Monday, has been interpreted as an attempt to “return” to big-time broadcasting after noodling around with alternative models over the past few years. It certainly looks like that on first impression, particularly after the disastrous Jay Leno experiment of 2009. While it will be months before we’re into these series to really get to know them, their packaging now is clearly indicative of how the network hopes we’ll perceive them, as Jonathan Gray reminds us. Based on the descriptions and trailers, most of the new shows certainly feel like classic “broadcasting”: high-concept, crowd-pleasing, relatively risk-light material (e.g., Chase, from Jerry Bruckheimer; Law & Order: Los Angeles, from the still-at-it Dick Wolf; and Undercovers, from JJ Abrams), with The Event taking up the open heavily-serialized conspiratorial thriller slot now that 24, Heroes, and Lost are no more. Even the new comedy Outsourced feels like a distilled amalgamation of their returning Thursday shows (the last remaining bastion of “buzz” currently left on NBC, unless you’re a Chuck fan). Conversely, only Love Bites, a romantic comedy anthology, treads sort-of new ground (given its been 40 years since Love, American Style), but its scheduling feels entirely functional, like it’s being tossed out there as a gesture to creators and critics to indicate NBC’s willingness to “take chances,” which basically means “this doesn’t really have a chance, but look! It’s ‘different’!” (let alone the sad reality that this Sex & The City retread probably passes for “feminism” in some Burbank offices).

In an era where ratings metrics are shifting, and the premise of commercial broadcasting appears precarious, the upfronts may seem like a vestige of a dying regime. However, given that this is also an era of brands–i.e., hot shows, and in theory, hot networks–the upfronts also serve to launch anticipation on multiple fronts. Accordingly, it’s ultimately not about the head-to-head schedule, but the shows as brands, and the overriding narrative that coalesces around the network. That is, at least until they actually start showing up in September…

In 2008, after some substantial acquisitions on the European television audience measurement front, Nielsen proudly informed its clients that it now controlled three quarters of the world’s television currency data.  But again, traditional television ratings represent only the tip of the iceberg for a company that is also a primary source of information about video sales (Nielsen VideoScan), book sales (Nielsen BookScan), video game sales (Nielsen Games), music consumption (Nielsen SoundScan), newspaper audiences (Scarborough Research), mobile device usage (Nielsen Mobile Media) and Web traffic (Nielsen NetRatings).  Nielsen has even begun competing head to head with Arbitron in the measurement of radio audiences (Nielsen Radio Audience Measurement).

And yet there remain many more media audiences – or at least aspects of these audiences –  to capture.  Today, Nielsen’s growth involves expansion across three dimensions.  The first is geographic.  For instance, Nielsen now provides television audience data in over 30 countries around the world.  The company’s NetRatings service has established panels and site-centric measurement systems in countries around the world, to the extent that Nielsen now claims to monitor 90 percent of global Internet activity.

The second dimension involves expansion across platforms.  One of Nielsen’s most significant ongoing initiatives is the development of its Anytime, Anywhere Media Measurement (A2/M2) system, which seeks to provide comprehensive audience data integrated across the “three screens” (television, computer, mobile device) by which the bulk of electronic media consumption takes place.  Nielsen also measures audiences for what it calls the “fourth screen” – location-based video outlets such as those found in health clubs, bars, gas stations, and elevators. As new media platforms enter the mediascape, Nielsen is there.

And the third, and perhaps least discussed, involves expansion across the criteria by which audiences are valued.  That is, today, buying media audiences has become about much more than simply buying audience exposure. Data on the size and demographics of the audience that consumed a particular piece of media content represent only scratches the surface of audience understanding in today’s rapidly changing media environment.  Today, advertisers and marketers also want information about how engaged those audiences were, how well they recalled what they consumed, and how their behaviors were affected (to name just a few of the emerging currencies).

Nielsen is continuing to expand to meet these demands as well.  For instance, Nielsen recently invested in a firm called NeuroFocus, which specializes in applying brainwaves research to the analysis of advertising and content effectiveness.  And just this month, Nielsen acquired an online audience measurement firm called GlanceGuide, whose primary product is an “attentiveness score” for online video content.  Nielsen IAG measures the extent to which television audiences recall the details of the programs they watched.  And Nielsen BuzzMetrics measures how much online conversation is taking place about various media products – both in advance of and after they are released.

The obvious question that arises from this scenario is whether it is a good or a bad thing for one firm to play such a dominant role in the construction of media audiences.  Even Congress has looked into this question.  I’m not going to try to answer the question of whether this situation is good or bad.  It’s too big a question to try to answer here. But what I will say is that this situation may very well be inevitable.  Media companies and advertisers hate uncertainty, and what a sole audience measurement service provides is a bit less uncertainty. Competing providers means competing – often contradictory – numbers.  And such contradictions equal uncertainty.  This isn’t to say that Nielsen’s numbers are necessarily right.  But as long as everyone involved chooses to treat them as right, uncertainty is reduced.  Such are the somewhat bizarre machinations of the audience marketplace.

Sir Elton John performed with Lady Gaga at the 52nd Grammy Awards last night.

Music industry blogger Bob Lefsetz begins his Grammys breakdown with a reminder to ‘those expressing displeasure with the Grammy telecast, that we know longer live in a monoculture”. Lefsetz astutely observes that the Grammys are a holdover from this period in which the networks ruled the televisual realm and the major labels controlled the popular music industry. For Lefsetz, the ‘monoculture’ ushered in by the music television era has been swept away by the emergence of the Internet and the fragmentation of the music and television marketplaces. Lefsetz poses the key question concerning the Grammys – does anyone really care anymore? – but he does not deign to provide a meaningful answer. I want to address this question by looking at what it means to ‘care’ and the relationship between this investment and a given pop event’s social utility.

On that note, I think that the Grammys are just as useful as ever, even if they may be less ‘meaningful’ in economic terms (the music industry’s preferred currency). Forbes.com states that ratings shot up by 35% for last night’s telecast, which followed an 11% ratings increase the year before. The numbers were particularly strong in the desired 18-to-49 age category.  Clearly, people are once again watching the telecast, even if one cannot be certain that most viewers ‘care’ about the popular artists and their music in the same way that they did in days gone by.

As a means of probing this development, I want to hypothesize that the same technological innovations that have brought about the end of this putative monoculture have also enabled people to discuss events such as this – often in an ironic, cynical, or actively disinterested way – in the virtual realm. I believe that this has, in turn, helped to bolster interest in programming of this nature. It may not be a coincidence that Grammy ratings began to rise in 2007, once Web 2.0 platforms like Facebook and Twitter achieved mass popularity. Users can now consume the program as a sort of collective spectacle; they need to no meaningful investment in the material on display to involve themselves in the commentary fray.  At the same time, the disparate observations that amass in newstreams and twitter feeds reconfigure the old rock/pop dichotomy; the major-label music industry is constructed as a monolith whose output registers as superficial mass culture in opposition to the great beyond of worthy and eclectic alternatives. Thus, the people may not ‘care’ about the Grammys in the same way (or the same numbers) as in the era when Michael Jackson first thrilled us, but they still use their virtual profiles to discuss the program’s tribute to him, Taylor Swift’s lamentable performance, and the relentlessly mediocre intergenerational duets that dotted the line-up. While there is nothing new in these performances of disinterest – music fans have been defining themselves in terms of what they don’t like since the dawn of the industry – I think the effect of this new iteration on mass spectacles such as the Grammys is a notable occurrence.

A prominent Canadian music critic put it best last night when he posted on Facebook that he “…would have started watching the Grammys years ago if the live-blog/Twitter peanut-gallery combo had existed. Fun way to spend a Sunday night, makes me feel like a music fan even. Lil Wayne 4Evah.” Of course, the critic in question is undoubtedly an avid music fan, but he means that this combination of broadcast and interactive media has given him a new sense of collective fandom pertaining to so-called pop music. Like so many others, he may not ‘care’ about many of the artists involved in last night’s blow-out, but he recognizes that the event now has a significant amount of use value as source for real-time cultural debate that fosters bonds with others. Where he might not be one to attend a dedicated Grammy party, he is content to enjoy the discussion on Facebook as he casts the odd eyeball at the telecast.

One might posit that, for many viewers, the Grammys now serve primarily as an overblown spectacle that helps one to identify with music through one’s displeasure (or guilty pleasure) at the sight of pop’s biggest stars doing their thing in a gussied-up hockey arena. One can catch the performance highlights (or lowlights) the next day on Youtube, or read news stories about the victors, but the capacity to have an experience of collective debate, acclamation, and disapprobation in real time lends the Grammys a new utility as a music television (and television music) event. This might not be of too much help to the struggling major labels, but it does underscore the fact that industrialized popular music fans continue to need their stars and spectacles, if only to provide fodder for collective rituals of celebration and denigration in the virtual realm.

Certainly, it would be ludicrous to say that something’s popular if nobody’s watching. And given how well NCIS, House, and Grey’s Anatomy have been doing in the ratings, for instance, it would be silly to say they’re unpopular.

But popularity is also about cultural salience, about a show’s place in popular culture, and about whether it really matters to people. Let’s use restaurants and eating out as an analogy. I often get my lunch at the Quizno’s opposite Vilas Hall, where I work. So if Nielsen were “rating” my lunch consumption, Quizno’s would be the equivalent of Sunday Night Football or American Idol. But I don’t particularly care for Quizno’s, and I enjoy many other places more. If you asked me which places I love, I wouldn’t list it. And in ten years time, if you ask what was a “popular” place to eat lunch in Madison in 2009, I doubt that I’d leap to listing Quizno’s, even though the line is always long when I’m there.

If Sunday Night Football is Quizno’s, some of those places I prefer may be like The Daily Show. Here’s a show that gets relatively low ratings (Melrose Place is the only primetime network show that consistently gets less viewers than TDS) but owns a specific moment in television. Or think of seminal shows like The Sopranos, Sex and the City, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer that similarly received relatively low viewer numbers, yet were hugely popular.

Why is this a pet peeve? It comes up when discussing “quality television,” and a quick recrimination is that scholars only pay attention to those shows that we as academics like. The recrimination can at times suggest that we should go write more books about NCIS or Two and a Half Men (or at the first Flow conference, I think it was JAG and Everybody Loves Raymond), and we’re made to feel guilty for caring in our nasty bourgeois hegemon kind of way about The Wire, and then we feel better about ourselves because we’ve restored our sense of what truly is popular. Now, I don’t want to be too harsh in criticizing this, since clearly media studies does need to wrestle with why so many people watch such shows, and with the meanings inherent. I yield that point. But to say we should study them shouldn’t require giving up on the other shows, nor need we assume that shows with better ratings truly are “more popular”. They may just be Quizno’s.

Sometimes the most popular shows have smaller viewer numbers. All of which points to a ratings pet peeve to discuss later, namely that Nielsen measures who is watching not why they’re watching and how much they love what they’re watching.

With the first sweeps weeks of the television season now behind us, the numbers suggest that it was a pretty lousy month. Indeed, far more shows experienced their lowest ratings of the season than did better.

The only real winners (with rise over previous high for the year in 18-49 rating and total viewers, in millions, in brackets) were Sunday Night Football (1.3/4.2), Football Night in America (0.4/1.26), the Dancing with the Stars finale (1.1/5.12), Law and Order (0.3/0.81), and 60 Minutes (0.2/2.31). Brothers had a great night (1.3/2.9), then plummeted back to its usual depths. Other shows with tiny upticks include, CSI, The Big Bang Theory, The Mentalist, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Bones, America’s Next Top Model, How I Met Your Mother, 2 and a Half Men, Smallville, One Tree Hill, Survivor, Numb3rs, Supernatural, Castle, 20/20, Vampire Diaries.

Compare that to big losses for (with drop under previous low for the year in 18-49 rating and total viewers, in millions, in brackets) V (1.9/4.87), American Dad (1/1.67), Family Guy (0.7/1.49), The Cleveland Show (0.6/1.47), Flash Forward (0.4/0.88), Fringe (0.4/0.71), Criminal Minds (0.3/1.43), The Simpsons (0.3/0.51), America Funniest Home Videos (0.3/0.53), and Private Practice (0.3/0), and smaller downticks for NCIS: LA, Jay Leno (every night), The Good Wife, Trauma, CSI: New York, Heroes, Community, Melrose Place, CSI: Miami, Gossip Girl, 90210, Medium, 30 Rock, Hank, Mercy, NCIS, Supernanny, New Adventures, Gary Unmarried, Lie to Me, Ugly Betty, and Desperate Housewives.

This last Wednesday was a killer for Modern Family, Cougar Town, The Middle, Eastwick, Glee, and So You Think You Can Dance, though that’s usual for the night before Thanksgiving, so I’m told.

I’m wondering if this is a sign of a bad year, or whether the sweeps have finally become truly irrelevant, as Nielsen introduces more boxes into local markets and phases out the journals. Or maybe a little bit of both?