(As an offtopic aside).

Wonder if the reason why low rated network shows like Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, etc ... are kept around, is if they attract a richer upper class demographic ?

Yes and no.

No, because Madam Secretary is a top 15 show and The Good Wife is a top 25 show, and this is considering that half of their episodes air against the #1 show on TV (Sunday Night Football) and many episodes do not start on time.

If you want to explore how demographic ratings keep a show on the air, look into Agents of SHIELD

Almost everyone believes Agents of SHIELD is being kept around by corporate fiat from Disney. ABC would have likely dumped it by now if it was up to them. Consider it 20 promotional episodes between Marvel's line of films.

It is widely rumored that The Good Wife stays on the air because CBS president Les Moonves (seen hamming it up on Colbert last night) and his wife love the show. If the network's president wants a show to stay on air, it will stay on air.

Believe it or not, many television executives take some pride in the product they present to the public.

The Good Wife is just about the last prestige drama on any of the broadcast networks, and it is not a ratings black-hole.

After its first season The Dick Van Dyke Show was on CBS's chopping block, but William Paley saved it because it was the only show on CBS that his circle of friends liked.

I am certain that all the NFL owners and Roger Goodell like it that the league makes billions, but I an also certain that they like it when the games are good.

I enjoyed King of the Nerds, but would trade its loss for a return of Beauty and the Geek, which still reigns as my favorite Spazz-O-Vision show.

In the demos that matter MS and TGW are on the bottom. I'll be shocked if MS gets a full season. CBS renewed that one way to early. Not sure where you get them as being a "top show" as viewers don't matter to advertisers who seek the 18-49 range.

Except TGW is a ratings black hole. It's season finale got a 1.2. How is that even good? Stalker was doing better. The 18-49 demo is what matters, and TGW is doing terrible. Where do you get your info on what is doing "good"?

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/201...enewed/390271/

Literally at the bottom. Feel free to read over that and let me know how TGW isn't a ratings black hole.

I've never watched the show myself, but I will say TGW gets a lot of positive attention from the various entertainment websites and magazines. They certainly make it seem like a prestige show, while "Stalker" was treated as an embarrassment. I think CBS and those same entertainment sources would like Madame Secretary to be something bigger than what it is, because it fits the face the network likes to present.

Overall viewership. The same overall viewership their network, CBS, uses to trumpet its status as the most watched network.

You are interested in demographics. Watch an episode of TGW and see what is being advertised. Those ads for luxury cars and stock brokers are not directed at people in their 20s who are still living at home with their parents.

http://www.tvinsider.com/article/198...rs-and-losers/

These Are the 50 Most-Watched TV Shows of the 2014-15 Season
#13: Madam Secretary with a season average of 14.3 million viewers
#26: The Good Wife, 12.3

The Good Wife isn't a ratings black-hole if you want to reach college-educated female viewers with money to spend.

If it was not for the cable and streaming competition, The Good Wife would have won at least three Best Drama Emmys in its six years of existence.

It is the last prestige drama --in the tradition of Hill Street Blues, LA Law, The Practice, The West Wing-- on network TV.

I don't think this is the correct link.

Advertisers don't care about overall viewership, they care about the 18-49 they are selling products to. People trying to add in "viewership" are usually those that have low-rated (18-49 demo) shows that seek any type of positive. I won't go on any further since there would no point since you think "viewers" matter when they don't. "Viewers" didn't save Harry's Law which had a low 18-49 demo but some of the highest "viewers" on the network.

It's correct.

"The Renew/Cancel Index is the ratio of a scripted show's new episode adults 18-49 ratings relative to the new episode ratings of the other scripted shows on its own network. It's calculated by dividing a show's new episode Live+Same Day adults 18-49 average rating by the Live+Same Day new episode average of all the new scripted show episodes on the show's own network. The network's average ratings in the calculation are not time weighted (ex. hour long shows are not weighted twice what 30 minute shows are)."

It shows that TGW is the lowest show CBS renewed last season in the 18-49 demo, the one that matters. Again, since you only care about "viewers" there is no sense in going on with this debate.

"Advertisers"

There are products and services that advertise that have little interest in reaching people in their 20s and early 30s.

How can you not understand that? Have ever heard of boner pills and wealth management?

Yes, The Good Wife does not have high viewership "in the demo" like it's time slot competition of football and zombies, but there is obviously a value to having 12 million viewers in the "rich and successful" demographic.

Harry's Law never had as many viewers as The Good Wife, and in its second season it fell from #28 to #52. I never watched an episode of Harry's Law, so I must assume its fans were poor and stupid.

I do understand that the 18-49 demo is the most coveted, but in a world where network viewership has been in a steady overall decline for years, you can not dismiss the value of a show that simply attracts eyeballs. And again, this is all about how TGW attracts rich eyeballs.

So in this calculation, The Good Wife is punished for being on the same network as The Big Bang Theory.

Just give me a straight number in millions of how many people "in the demo" watch TGW. And then give me the same info for shows like Castle, Blacklist, Blue Bloods, Nashville just to see how TGW stacks up against other adult dramas.

It takes approximately five weeks for TBS to run through the first seven seasons of TBBT. That's how often they show these.

If one wants to figure this out, there's more detail ratings data at:

http://www.showbuzzdaily.com/article...ision-articles

RIP to the true king of the nerds, Robert Carradine. Probably a good time to watch my Blu-ray of the original Revenge of the Nerds.

https://deadline.com/2026/02/robert-...71-1236734055/

Ah, that was the name of it. I mentioned it in the Carradine thread in the Movie forum that he hosted this show, but i had already forgotten the name.