Engadget: Sociology 101

If you're a marketing exec and you happen to be reading my blog--well, what the heck are you doing wasting your 6 figure salary on my blog--but, more to the point, if you haven't been paying attention to what Engadget is up to, you're missing out on some invaluable "Free" research in their latest (and may I say much appreciated) give aways today and yesterday.

I put my two cents in on both of these contests, not because I thought I had a remote chance of winning, but because like most people, I'm more than happy to share the greatness of my favorite band and favorite TV show. For the record, my favorite song was listed as Beautiful by Storm Large--even though I think that TOOL is a better band I think Storm is a very close second, and she needs the publicity more. I threw in Numb3rs for my fav TV show and like all other ego maniacs, I started thumbing through the responses to see how many other people were as smart as me. Turns out, I'm more of an elitist... not a whole lot of people chiming in on the Numb3rs show. At least, not on the first 50 pages of responses. As I check right now, there's just under 6000 comments(yes, say it out loud: "Six Thousand Comments"--don't you wish your blog was so popular?) on today's question, which seems a realistic trend considering yesterday's question has had two days to garner comments and its sporting about 12,500 comments.

What really made me trudge all the way over here to the Caffeinated Life to discuss this subject, though, was the sheer number of fans that certain cancelled shows have. I mean, and I'm talking to you again Mr. Exec, I've looked at 50 pages of comments at 20 comments a page (that's a thousand comments for those without a calculator), and roughly 20% of respondents have cited "Firefly" as their favorite show. Firefly was cancelled after only eleven episodes, FOUR YEARS AGO. IMHO, the Engadget survey is reporting that someone at FOX had a cranial-anal inversion. Same corporation (FOX) apparently has a problem with wildly successful shows because Arrested Development is hooking about 10% of the fan base and it, too, was cancelled by none other. Fox is not alone as many weigh in with ABC's cancelled "Alias", at least a memorable amount of times, as their most favoritist show. And I'll throw X-Files and West Wing in the mix because I counted both of these about a dozen times or so.

Ironically, Friends made the list only once (in the 50 pages I looked at). Other shows that one would think appeal to this particular demographic but were only mentioned, on average, once: Star Trek, That 70's Show, South Park (to be fair, more than once, but less than 10 times), The OC, Orange County Choppers, CSI (> 1 | < 10), American Idol, WWE/WWF, Sopranos (though Deadwood [slated for cancellation] and Entourage made strong showings for HBO), Will and Grace, King of the Hill (first mention on page 68), Pimp My Ride was the only MTV show mentioned and only once; (Magnum P.I. got more mentions than The Real World), Saturday Night Live... these are shows that are thought to be the juggernauts of TV? Not according to Engadget readers.

There's plenty of insight on successful shows still in production: LOST is seemingly taking the lion's share, but Battlestar Galactica is doing very respectable, as is House, Scrubs, Grey's Anatomy, 24, Family Guy, Smallville, The Office, and of course still holding strong after all these years: The Simpsons. My Name is Earl, The Entourage, and Prison Break get honorable mentions, as does the Myth Busters (Discover) and Eureka (a new favorite of mine on SCIFI) and Stargate SG-1/Alantis.

That's my shpeel: Engadget, one of the hottest internet news commodities when it comes to electronics and gadgets is offering up one smorgasbord of collective marketing goodness, free o' charge. Is anyone listening? Because if it get's Firefly or Arrested Development back on the air, itsaboutfreakingtime; the nerve of some people cancelling these shows in an effort to force feed me more reality TV carp. That's right, I might have mis-spelled it, but you know what I mean.