We’re As Surprised As You Are

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When ShowbuzzDaily stopped operating in May, we thought the site was gone for good.  We were unable even to enter the site to find out why it was locked, and our attempts to get technical assistance hit a variety of digital cement walls.  However, we’re delighted to report that with a little help, we were able to get the site back into service.

For the most part, ShowbuzzDaily will be as it was before, but there will be a few changes:

The biggest is that we’ve made the decision to no longer post morning preliminary broadcast network ratings.  That’s not connected to our technical difficulties, we just feel like those numbers, which are available only to the tenth of a rating point, have increasingly little meaning when broadcast 18-49 ratings are now almost entirely within a narrow range, roughly 0.5-1.0.  In addition, Nielsen had already adopted a policy of not reporting preliminary ratings for major live events like sports and awards programming.  And of course the preliminary ratings for Monday-Thursday are superseded by finals a few hours later anyway.  We will continue to post broadcast finals and cable ratings on our traditional schedule.

We’re increasing our coverage of news programming with a daily chart that includes both broadcast and cable daily ratings.

We know there are going to be requests for the May-August 2021 ratings that we were unable to post.  To be honest, filling in that gap isn’t a priority for us, and although at some point our intention is to put up charts for that period (without text), it will take some time.

As readers have periodically requested, we’re in the process of shifting our comments to the Disqus system.  While we’re on this subject, a note about comments:  one of the less pleasant developments of the past year or so had been that our comments section was following much public discourse these days by becoming polarized and even flat-out insulting.  There are a seemingly infinite number of places on the internet where people who disagree with each other can indulge in mutual abuse, but we don’t intend this site to be one of those places, and our intent is to delete posts (and potentially posters) that cross personal lines.

We know there have been recurring problems with our daily headlines email, and it’s on our list to fix.

We have some other exciting ideas for the future that we’re not quite ready to share, but for now, we’re happy to welcome all of you back.  Please let everyone you know with an interest in TV and film that, to paraphrase Monty Python & The Holy Grail, we’re not dead; in fact we’re feeling much better.