Thoughtnami

So, what I’m pretty much understanding is that if someone makes a comment that I dig and would like to reply to around these pages but now I can’t because the new layout of Tumblr won’t allow me to copy and paste it? 

That’s … really damned stupid, Tumblr. 

You know that GI Joe sequel that not only looks amazing but twenty-times better than the original film that was supposed to be coming out next month?

Paramount said wait a while longer. Like March 2013.

Yup. The studio’s delaying the premiere almost a whole year to “have an international push and 3D conversion.”

Studiospeak for “we’re scared of The Avengers, Batman, and Spider-Man”

Did you know ThunderCats returns to Cartoon Network on Marc h 24 at 9:30 AM E/P, two weeks from today?

Did you know a day earlier, Cartoon Network is premiering a new computer-animated Ben 10 movie at 7 PM E/P and part one of the Ben 10 Ultimate Alien series finale at 9 AM E/P?

Of course you didn’t.

Cartoon Network only promotes Level Up, Ninjago, Green Lantern, and the bullying special.

Idiots like me only promote things because Cartoon Network knows idiots like me could do it for nothing. But like I said, the internet shouldn’t be the sole advertising vessel for people who own television networks.

i have no clue what those numbers mean, i see 2.something/10 and i’m thinking that’s the score they gave it out of 10. but if you say its a good thing then I trust you

The Nielsen ratings, the criteria of how well something’s doing. It’s not a system out of 10, mind you. Each ratings point represents 1% of a particular television audience, in this case, children 6-11.

So, let’s say, for example, about 290 million television viewers in the United States. Out of that, let’s say that less than a quarter of that number has children 2-17. That’s about 57 million homes. Now, take about less than half of that for a representation of the 6-11 demographic. That’s a touch over 21 million viewers.

Each ratings point for the 6-11 audience represents  about 1% of the 21 million viewers that age, so, about 210,000. viewers.

And less than 1% of the 290 million total viewers are even participating in the Nielsen ratings system.

Using what we know, Green Lantern got a 2.1 while Young Justice got a 2.2, meaning of all the shows that was on TV at that moment, 2.1% of kids 6-11 was watching GL and 2.2% of the same demographic watched YJ.

That roughly translates to Green Lantern getting about 441,000 viewers 6-11 for Green Lantern and 462,000 viewers 6-11 for Young Justice.

Is it a low number? If you’re just measuring that one demo, it’s anemic yet a comfortable success. The numbers are slightly better on Saturday mornings than they were on Friday nights. However, it’s just the numbers for only one demographic. The hard number is usually bigger, almost double that for total viewers.Something like Spongebob, which got a 5.5 in the 6-11 demographic, could have close to 2 million viewers if you count all the demographics.  

The ratings that are made public usually depend on the demographic the network selling ad space to, or in Disney Channel’s reasoning, cable companies who keep it on the lineup.

Also, not everybody is always counted in the end. Remember, only 1% of the audience is represented by the Nielsens, and it tends to favor affluent, White upper-middle-class households. I’m of the belief that one household represents the viewpoint of one household, not 1% of the entire television audience, but until the system is changed, this is what we have.

And so far, in this case, it’s pretty good.

Smart is something nobody will ever accuse the management of Cartoon Network of ever being.

7 PM on the coasts on a Wednesday night would be prime real estate for an encore airing of DC Nation. It makes more sense to air it in a timeslot with a vast viewership (not to mention leading up to that Lego cartoon that’s there) on a day that actually ties in with the product the shows AND block are based on (translation: comics come out on Wednesdays)  than, say, the next morning at the same damned time.

That is stupid as hell.

But like I said, nobody will ever accuse the management of Cartoon Network of ever being smart.

The Dukes of Hazzard

V

Martin

I think that’s it. Of ALL the shows currently in the Warner Bros. live-action television library, these are the only three series owned outright that are on an American television network. II picked pre-93 as a cut-off point because these shows will be 20 years old or older by the end of 2012.

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air doesn’t count because it’s not owned by Warner Bros, but rather NBC Universal (WB, for some reason, owns syndication and DVD rights, not unlike how Sony owns syndication and DVD rights to Seinfeld, which Warner Bros. does own).

But yeah, The Dukes of Hazzard’s on CMT, V is on Syfy, and Martin’s on TV One and MTV 2. But nothing older than each of those shows (with the exception of Full House and Family Matters, which will probably be syndicated until the end of time) are found on television. Heck, Gilligan’s Island, a show that used to be on television every day of the week for many generations, is only seen on TheWB.com.

It’s weird that a company that had been determined to be the global leader of the internet generation has been so terrible at embracing the new medium let alone bringing their massive library to a wider, newer, younger audience.

The internet is a great tool for advertising and promoting your wares.

More and more people use it every day, and anybody can get into it. However, if you own an outlet that’s more available to the masses and can influence more eye sockets, why not use that a little more for advertisement?

Now, here’s the thing …

I’m not calling out Cartoon Network because they’re constantly doing it for every production without a flesh-and-blood on-screen component. I’m calling them out because they pick and choose what gets heavily promoted over others. In the end, some shows don’t get pushed at all.

Yeah, we’re seeing Green Lantern pushed more because it’s new, but Young Justice, which also debuts new episodes the same day, hasn’t had a stand-alone ad since the first quarter of 2011 when the series debuted. When the show returned that fall, no ads at all. Same thing with ThunderCats and Generator Rex.

If I hadn’t told you that new episodes of ThunderCats return  four weeks from tomorrow, would you have honestly known?

While Cartoon Network began bombarding us with Level Up trailers in August for a film that debuted in November, it was just called business. Some said it’s because unlike ThunderCats and Young Justice, Level Up is fully-owned by Cartoon Network. So that was their justification

So how come the first news of a brand new Ben 10 computer-animated movie debuting four weeks from tonight came not from the network on the network but a guy who’s friends with the director on Twitter? Why didn’t the promotion of a movie based on a multimillion-dollar property the network owns outright start, say, after the Level Up movie premiere or the overhyped awards show they promoted since November but aired in February?

It’s telling that the production side of the DC Nation block is doing a better job at promoting the block than the network that’s airing it, even providing a recap clip to bring viewers up to speed about what went down and what you need to know right now. They’re only showing that online. I have a feeling more people would watch it if it were on television.

The internet is nice, but if you actually have a television network that reaches way more people, why not use THAT to promote what you’re offering? Advertising works, and everybody knows it. It’d be nice to let people know what’s coming on television ON TELEVISION.

You know those old shows you used to watch when you were a kid? Ones that made you want to get up early on a Saturday morning or rushing home to watch after a long day of school.

You know the types. You know their names. They’re reasons my generation still enjoy cartoons and have a fondness for old-school things.

But the only way people could see these lost programs is on digital outlets that have them legally like Jaroo, Crackle, The WB, Crunchyroll, or Hulu. That’s to say, the ones those companies actually care about.

The.shows that aren’t on television, DVD, iTunes, or streaming online in an official capacity are often found hovering in unofficial domains on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, and others. A few folks who managed to trade tapes and discs have turned that craft into a more digital format. What  both groups of fans are doing is piracy and illegal. But often, it’s the only route many folks have to watch those shows because, let’s face it, a lot of what folks liked in the past, Big Media wants to put aside.

We’re likely never going to see You Can’t Do That on Television, Eureeka’s Castle, The Great Space Coaster, Foofur, Out of This World, Tranzor Z, My Secret Identity, Pandamonium, Drac Pack, Head of the Class, Mighty Orbots, Kissyfur, New Amsterdam, Max Headroom, the entire run of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or ALF: The Animated Series ever again.

There are some value in those older shows and productions.  The fans know it. Big Media knows it but they don’t know how to deal with it. 

One company created an “Archives Collection” which is a good idea on paper, but flawed in execution (I’ll talk about that in-depth on another site another time). That’s one way a company can deal with the library products they have but aren’t making available in the public.

Here are two ways Big Media could combat piracy of those older titles:

Make them available across multiple platforms right now.. I know, it should be a no-brainer. You have a library of titles, you’d want to put them out in the public. However, few titles are out there, and even fewer are available on a myriad of outlets. About 1/3 of a library is shown and out in the public. Put it all out there. Stream them. Put them on iTunes (or, if you can, create your own video purchase channels). Put them on Hulu (did you know a company with the largest library of entertainment doesn’t have any of their products on Hulu at all?) Syndicate them, and before you go out on a tangent, the syndication market is the strongest it has been in ages, especially for library programming. Digital channels like Antenna TV, This TV, Me TV, RTV, Bounce TV, and qubo and smaller cable channels like The Hub, GMC, Hallmark, and FamilyNet have created new life for old favorites and creating new fans in the process as well as reconnecting with older fans. They’re working and succeeding in droves. But if the idea of putting your wares across multiple platforms to audiences that want them still make you feel uncomfortable, you could always go in a completely different route, one that makes more sense in the end especially if you don’t want those products out in any form at all:

Put those titles in the public domain. GASP! Scandalous, I know. The thought of giving shows and films to the public for absolutely nothing? The shame! But it makes a lot of sense. If you have a product that you don’t feel has enough value, won’t even sell or syndicate, and just let it rot in a vault never to be seen again, why don’t you just get rid of it? If you feel a product has no life outside of your own myopic vision, then put those products out in the public domain. There are many books, stories, films, and shorts in the public domain because somebody felt that they had no worth and they didn’t even want to put them out there in any other form. The Fleischer Superman shorts are in the public domain. Is the character? Nope. It’s still partially owned by Time Warner and the estates of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. It’s out there in the open and anybody can take and watch them at their leisure. The shorts belong to the people. Here’s the first one. Easy, right? Nobody’s going to pirate those shorts. Big Media is so hellbent on keeping everything they’ve ever created though 2/3 of what they make they really don’t care about.  So, release them. Instead of just tracking every single title you own, you could focus on the ones you feel have real value and the ones that could find new life in syndication, and release the library you don’t really care about out in the open.

Every six months, release a cycle of shows, films, and other properties into the public domain. It shrinks your massive libraries, but you still own the master prints and trademarks. You just made the copyrights to those programs public and open. And if you want to recoop your costs, just release those PD titles that have the biggest draw in sets and have extra materials that you’d still own. 

Just two ways to combat piracy, at least when it comes to older library titles.