Hi, TV_Voters!
The voting is over and the final totals are posted at http://richlabonte.net/tvvote for all of you and future television and web poll historians.
It was a fine battle and well fought by all! The debate goes on as to whether it was a "good day to die", but the poll ended on a high note as I hoped. Our last week was the most active in the history of the poll - the highest number of recorded visits to our site was 11,123 on August 6th, one week before the final day of voting, with 3,792 visitors.
68,528 visits from August 6th to August 12th (the last full day of voting), with 10,476 "absolutely unique" visitors, 219,881 page views and 10.43% new (first-time) visitors.
Most of our visitors came in directly by the end of the poll, but fan forums and sites sent 12,456 visits (out of 68,528) from 271 different sources in the final week, with the CBS boards sending us 29% of those (thank you, Jericho and Moonlight fans.)
Those 68,528 visits came from 93 countries/territories, with the majority (71%) from the US, followed by Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, France, Poland, Spain, Russia and The Netherlands.
Not bad for a little fan site without corporate sponsors (or a budget, for that matter.)
To paraphrase Raycheetah, here's what I learned from this experience:
Fan Power is a real energy. We proved it and tapped it without help from the television industry or corporate powers that be. Maybe the industry should try doing the same instead of relying on the statistic factories and dubious methods of corporate pollsters who are fighting for their own survival amidst an ever-widening array of entertainment delivery systems.
Internet polls are not scientific, but they can produce a relatively accurate measurement if you get millions of people to vote, demonstrated by the presence of two classic westerns in our Top 5.
TV fans are more passionate about TV dramas than sitcoms or talk or game shows. Look at our results for proof. Even classic comedies like I Love Lucy or hugely popular recent shows like Seinfeld barely scored. Johnny Carson got 100 votes.
Dramas create lasting longtime loyalties with viewers. Out of our Top 5 shows, two left the airwaves over thirty years ago and of the three that produced new episodes in the 21st Century, only one is still on the air and is based on a popular series from thirty years ago.
The infamous 18-34 age demographic touted by corporate pollsters does not apply to television fan loyalty. The number 10 show in our poll, Combat!, has not aired on national television since 1967 and still had enough fans to score 244,131 votes. Although some of those Combat! fans might be DVD buyers, it's probably safe to say that most Combat! fans are over 34 years old.
Modern campaigns to defeat network cancellation misjudgments and bring back popular television series in some form are real and growing. Firefly remains the best recent example of success in this regard - and the Firefly-Whedon fanbase is a mighty and fearful force indeed - but Jericho and Moonlight fanbases show how the trend is escalating. Jericho shot up our list in an impressively short time and by the end of the poll, Moonlight had more individual voters coming in daily than any other single show in the poll's history. Scores of shows in our poll inspired similar large scale fan response when they were cancelled: Blood Ties, Farscape, Angel, Roswell, Babylon 5 and older shows like Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Dark Shadows. These fans don't forget.
Ultimately, the television audience should have a greater voice in network programming decisions - and TV fans will actively campaign for that voice.
Direct contact between television networks and fans is advisable and the networks should be looking for new ways to communicate with their viewers because the battle for the airwaves has just begun.
Fan Power!
:o)>FLAtRich
Friday, August 15, 2008
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5 comments:
Many folks have (sometimes disparagingly) asked me, "What good is this poll? Is is gonna get us our show back?"
Well, some folks didn't get the point, never even tried to. TV Vote was more than just a fun diversion, it has been a rallying point for fandoms which might otherwise not have had the focus for that kind of group effort, despite their numbers.
More than that, as a Firefly Browncoat, it has been my pleasure to reach across fandom lines to other folks, sharing Firefly with new folks, and discovering (or, in the case of Dark Shadows, re-discovering) what is so cool about their favorite shows, as well.
So, yeah, bragging rights are nice, but it was the shared experience both within and outside my core fandom which has made TV Vote so rewarding for me. It may be that the TV execs never even heard of the Poll; not like they could be counted on to pay attention, anyway.
But if we Browncoats ever hope to get more Firefly, the odds are improved with every new person with whom we share our shiny show, so, indirectly, TV Vote has enhanced the possibility in that way.
I hope that those of us who have participated will not drift away too quickly; every vote cast, every click of a vote box was an act of will, an expression of love for shows which have been special to us. It would be a shame to lose the connections we have made, now that the voting is over, because, for many of us, our fellow voters have become special to us, as well.
-RC =^[.]^=
Hi Rich,
Very well said. As an "older" viewer ( remember watching both Combat! and Gunsmoke in original run) I think that your poll really did show that there is a good mix of fans out there that characteristally may sometimes go overboard cheering on their fav. I know we had the Gunsmoke boards and the Combat! board marching and spurring our way up the polls. It was a good battle with BSG and I congratulate them for handling the race for fourth place in style and yes Raycheetah I have to say I used your quotes from the BSG board to keep my western voters on their horses voting for Gunsmoke. But we also did it for Linda Sue. I think a several of us me for Gunsmoke and Ellen from Bonanza learned from Ray and Flattop how to do the daily stats (very time consuming I don't know how you did that Ray every day) and I know at least two on the combat! board that actually ended up with the stat race too. We were so close but are thrilled that Combat! made it to tenth place at least, we are proud of that accomplishment. I actually ended up signing up on the Firefly board and posting a few times (yes westernmarshal) and I have checked out Firefly on the scifi channel at times.
But more importantly Rich I think your poll brought people together of all genres of shows. Whether it had been in the top 40 or the noms. And toward the end as goals wanted to be made, concessions and compromises and joining in the acts of helping all seemed to spread from space to the prairie to the battlefronts to the dark shadows. I'd been voting just over two years (feel a bit lost right now with no voting) but I've enjoyed the run and thank you so much for letting it all happen.
Yep, it was pretty interesting learning about all the other fandoms. I'm sure a lot of our esteemed competition was amazed to know of the Bonanza (and Gunsmoke) fan base as well. I was pretty amazed a couple times when I read a "what is Bonanza, anyway?" comment!
I have a signature line on one of the Bonanza sites I post on:
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another:
'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.' - C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)
I might edit it to be "I thought we were the only ones!" It has certainly been an eye-opening experience.
Again, THANKS!
Rich,
Thank you for the poll. It was fun and the Jericho and Moonlight fans worked very hard.
It is time for the TV industry to admit that the FANS are the CUSTOMERS. It is time for the Viewers to realize they have voices and to use those voices to be heard.
www.viewerswithvoices.com - If you want your voice heard, check it out.
N2N2
Ray's got it right about the "What good is this poll?" doubters. As one of the "Cousins" who tried to send reminders to The Man from U.N.C.L.E lists, I got that a lot.
Their concern was less about a revival of a show that had left the airwaves in 1969 (with a TV-movie reunion in the mid-80s) than about the long missing-in-action MFU DVDs. Some thought this poll would help, and we did rise to about 6th position before we began to lose steam and fall down the list.
Did it accomplish anything for our classic spy show, once a world-wide phenomeon? Well, several years after our TV Vote Poll campaign, many of those who voted for MFU now own our Complete Series DVD sets, released by Time-Life, and the individual season sets are now appearing in retail stores as well. Did TV Vote have anything to do with it? I don't know, but I sure would like to think so. (Of course the fact that both stars of the show had reignited their popularity in the casts of two new hit shows undoubtedly had something to do with it, too!)
Anyway, thanks for the TV Vote experience, Rich. It's been fun...
Channel D closed.
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