Questions about anything

[minor muppetz]

How do ratings work, anyway? I know that there are nielsen families who keep track of what they watch and when, and I think there's a satellite-thingy which keeps track of TVs that have the programs on, but I recently read an article about Thursday nights ratings (regarding the Muppets & Lady Gaga special.... Yeah, I'm giving the Muppets top billing), and it mentioned ratings for people in different age groups. How can they determine what age the people watching were (especially when there could have been viewers of all demographics watching?).

And also, if the same program is on multiple TVs in the same house/building, do they count all the TVs that it's watching on? If somebody records a program and watches it later, do the ratings "detect" that it was at least recorded (which I could see being more realeastic now in the DVR age than in the VCR age)?

 

[D'Snowth]

Didn't you already ask that a long time ago?

 

[minor muppetz]

Didn't you already ask that a long time ago?

Maybe I did, but can't remember if I asked it here or somewhere else (or maybe I did ask here and somewhere else). I don't remember if I had gotten an answer. I guess I'll have to find time to search through all 115 pages of posts to see.

 

[mr3urious]

Why do so many celebrities shoot web videos on such crappy quality cameras? You think they could afford something of better quality than that.

 

[D'Snowth]

You sure they're not doing it from webcams?

 

[minor muppetz]

A few things concerning Saturday Night Live, and some of it might qualify more for the "did you ever notice...?" thread, but I'm not entirely sure.

The sixth season is considered an "old shame" of the show. Not sure if that's for the shows owner, the producers, or what. But most of the cast and crew from the infamous sixth season is not involved with the show before. Even if most of the season isn't good, is it really an old shame to anybody who can get it broadcast/released on DVD?

I watched the last two episodes on Netflix, and I thought those two were good. Maybe it's due to the cult of watching something that's been so rare for a long time (very few episodes had been broadcast in America since the 1980-1981 season, very few clips have been included in anniversary specials or compilations, clips from this season were even ignored from "The Best of 1980" video release, which included stuff from the last half of the 1979-1980 season instead), or maybe it's because the last two episodes from that season featured a number of people from the first five years (Bill Murray hosting one episode, and the last of the season having appearances by Chevy Chase, Mr. Bill, and Al Franken). I thought that a lot of segments from those two episodes were very funny, and not just the stuff with the 1975-1980 cast members (there was a commercial sketch I liked which spoofed the Chapstick commercials with celebrities changing their last names to Chapstick). Of course the last episode of the season was different from the rest of the season. Netflix cut out a lot of stuff from the episodes, not sure if it was just music rights, but if Netflix cut out material for being too terrible, then at least they were able to find clips from each season six episode that was good enough.

And does/did Netflix cut out more than just the music acts? I watched the Jim Carey episode from 1995, and there was one segment I was hoping to see again that was cut, which I don't recall there being any music in (I could be wrong). And that segment was even mentioned in the episode description.

And I thought that when it came to clearances on Netflix, rules applied to how clearances were secured for syndication as opposed to video (which is why Netflix could have episodes of Batman and The Wonder Years available). So were music acts from SNL cleared differently? And I've watched a lot of SNL reruns, which didn't edit all of the music acts.

Netflix had every episode of SNL, but now it only has episodes from 1995-today (and a week or two ago, they had episodes from as far back as the late-1980s). Why has Netflix removed so many episodes? I've watched a few episodes, but there were quite a few that I wanted to watch (like the one hosted by Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis).

And does Lorne Michaels have control over the TV broadcasts? Because I've read that a number of episodes were never rerun because he didn't allow them to be rerun (though this obviously doesn't apply to the DVD releases)?

 

[Drtooth]

Why is everyone acting like twerking is a new thing?

A-freaking-Men! Twerking is well over 10 years old! Proof? Around 2002-2004, I inexplicably got MTV2 on broadcast television (which turned into a shopping channel, an infomercial channel, and finally a Spanish Channel- the cycle of crappy UHF stations). Every so often the rap music video show would come on, and every so often they'd show this Ying Yang Twins video. I think the song was called AYE-YI-YI-Yi-YI or something... that was the ... would you call it a chorus? Anyway, they mentioned twerking like 2 or 3 times in the music video... one at the beginning where they have a fake press conference (or they were being hounded by reporters) and a reporter asks "Hey, Ying Yang Twins. What's your next project after 'Whistle While you Twerk'?" And it was also in the lyrics, I'd say the chorus... that, and the fact that one of them chomps an imaginary bone (which was really really hip and cool and not in anyway idiotic and hilarious for it).

So yeah, Twerking is only "popular" now since the media got wind of something from 10 years ago that like one girl did in some viral video. Ah, mainstream media... never NOT sucking and failing to be relevant.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Someone might've posted this before (maybe even me), but we have these outdoor light fixtures. There's a bulb inside and you screw on a glass dome. Once a year, we have to unscrew the domes to change the bulbs, and clean out the dead bugs that got in. It's a sealed fixture, but HOW DO THE BUGS STILL MANAGE TO GET IN????

 

[mr3urious]

Someone might've posted this before (maybe even me), but we have these outdoor light fixtures. There's a bulb inside and you screw on a glass dome. Once a year, we have to unscrew the domes to change the bulbs, and clean out the dead bugs that got in. It's a sealed fixture, but HOW DO THE BUGS STILL MANAGE TO GET IN????

I remember George Carlin asking the same question in one of his books.

 

[mr3urious]

Someone might've posted this before (maybe even me), but we have these outdoor light fixtures. There's a bulb inside and you screw on a glass dome. Once a year, we have to unscrew the domes to change the bulbs, and clean out the dead bugs that got in. It's a sealed fixture, but HOW DO THE BUGS STILL MANAGE TO GET IN????

I remember George Carlin asking the same question in one of his books.