The nature of "watching television" has changed dramatically over the past few years, with the growing use of recording technologies like TiVo and digital video recorders from cable companies, and the availability of television programming on line.
And now "Heroes" has a
unique problem, midway through its third season:
"That a series with the ratings of “Heroes” could be perceived as being in trouble demonstrates the upheaval in the television business. Among the group that advertisers most covet, adults 18 to 49, “Heroes” ranks eighth over all, according to Nielsen Media Research.
But that is down from sixth last year, an alarming sign because the series is among the most expensive to produce, costing more than $4 million an episode. NBC, like most television studios, has recently asked its producers to rein in costs.
One bright spot, NBC executives say, is that while only about 8.3 million viewers have watched the show during its regular time slot, nearly 2 million more record and watch it within a week, according to Nielsen. That is one of the highest rates of DVR viewership gain among all shows on television. The show also is among the most-viewed online on NBC.com and Hulu.com, the site owned by NBC Universal and the News Corporation, parent company of the Fox network.
The show might, in a sense, attract too many young viewers, those least likely to watch the series when it is broadcast and therefore more likely to skip the commercials that pay for the production."
Ya think? I'm not even on the advertisers' radar screens, and I record it and fast-forward through the commercials too.
