Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007 April 27

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April 27

Who was Dixie Ray in pictures by Edward Steichen and Dalvador Dali?

Steichen did a nude photo and Dali, a nude painting, but who was she? A pornographic movie using her name was made in 1983.

Tekken

Is tekken tag better or tekken 5? Not the dark resurrection. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 219.88.75.219 (talk) 04:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC).

Ultimately this is personal taste and I doubt we can tell you which game is better. But if you're looking for a general consensus, try Metacritic and GameRankings, which collect the opinions of many. Spiral Wave 08:35, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

ohh both are really good but i like the whole tag team element in tekken tag :D

new hip hop duo

does anyone know who im talking about i saw this feature on this new hip hop duo on MTV base , i think their from chicago and their 2 friends from high school or college (something like that) and they want to bring real hiphop back so the new generation knows what hip hop was originally about and their music is sick they have got real skill and talent I MUST KNOW WHO THIS DUO IS!!! BRING REAL HIPHOP BACK :D —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.42.99.196 (talk) 09:02, 27 April 2007 (UTC).

American TV

I'm the UK which has a pretty different system of TV so when it comes to American TV schedules I'm something of a confused outsider. I know that the big shows all uniformally seem to start in the Autumn, go on hiatus around the beginning of December when reruns and the occassional pilot are shown until Febuary when the second half of the season begins in time for sweeps week. I have a couple of questions though:

1. Why is there this break in the middle of the season? I can appreciate taking a week or two off around Christmas and New Year, which is what would be done in the UK where this time would be spent with seasonal shows, but why the need for almost 2 months off.

2. What actually happens between April/May when most shows seem to end their run and Octoberish when they start their next season? This gap seems alien as someone in the UK who's used to big shows starting all year round.

Edit: 3. Why are there seemingly randomly placed reruns during "half seasons"? For example I've noticed that right now shows like Bones and Heroes only seem to be showing a new episode every couple of weeks with a rerun inbetween, this is another entirely alien concept to someone brought up with UK TV. --Kiltman67 18:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The seasons are much to do with the Nielsen Ratings system, particularly with regards to the "Sweeps". The mid-season breaks and re-runs mid season are also ratings related. In shows like Lost, with complex plot strands, if you don't start watching from the start it can be very difficult to catch up. So they run catch-up shows and re-runs to try and increase their viewing figures during the season. The mid-season breaks coincide with the space between the Sweeps. The idea is that you get large viewing figures for your cliff-hanger mini-finale in the November sweep, and then for the first episode back in the February Sweep. Mid-season breaks also help ease the productions schedule of shows such as Lost where there is a large cast and on-location filming.

In the breaks between seasons, they generally show repeats of old shows. Many US sports play through the summer, so they will also be televised then. Hope that helps. Rockpocket 19:10, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for answering my first couple of questions. Are sports the reason that it's just reruns over the summer? I keep hearing about various shows being axed, especially by Fox among others and I can't help but wonder if taking some of the new shows from October-May and moving them into the summer would be better for their ratings, of course with some overlapping because October-May is longer then June-September

From a business POV it seems a little strange. If we think of October-May and June-September as two seperate markets and the TV channels as companies trying to sell a product, if there was too much competition in one market for your product to be successful then you'd try and sell it in another market with less competition.

Anybody have any idea on my third question? I did wonder if since TV shows are getting more arc based in the past few years they were trying to make more mini-cliffhangers, but it's not during the sweeps and from what I remember they were doing it before the trend towards arcs began. --Kiltman67 20:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

US television programming is a brutal business. Its very difficult to appreciate quite how money-driven it is from a UK perspective, where major channels have at least some level of public service agenda. Everything, and I mean everything, is ratings driven. If a show is not getting sufficient ratings, the advertising income drops and the show gets pulled. A show like last year's Sons & Daughters was critically acclaimed but was up against the dreaded American Idol. ABC filmed 11 episodes, and showed 10 of them to a small but growing audience share. However, as the season finale approached ABC calculated that by showing a repeat of America's Funniest Home Videos they could get more viewers so they did that instead of showing the final episode (which looks like it will remain unaired). It seems crazy that they would cancel it with just one episode left, but those considerations don't apear to matter.

The other side of this coin is that shows that do generate good ratings are under huge pressure to continue way past their creative lifespan (see Jumping the Shark). This is why you don't get shows like The Office made in America that are hugely popular and critically acclaimed, but only last two seasons. If its popular, it continues until it is no longer popular, then it gets axed. There are a few exceptions to this (The Sopranos and Seinfeld spring to mind.)

Some shows such as The Nine struggled for ratings, so they pulled the plug half-way through the season, and then plan to show the remaining episodes to fill time in the summer, or when the ratings are not counted for advertising purposes. It does seem strange that the summer market is not better exploited with new shows, but I expect that serial viewing figures are much lower in the summer, as Americans go on vacation and spend much more time outside. Plus, there is the issue of the logistical aspects of the ratings system, which created the televisions seasons in the first place. Rockpocket 21:01, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

As Rockpocket mentioned, the summer is full of reruns and such because it's the summer. People are going on vacations and spending more time outside. So if the television people try to pull them inside to watch they have that much more of a hard job doing that. And the payoff just isn't there. But by having sweeps near the end of winter when people are getting cabin fever, they can easily grab viewers who want to forget that they're still inside. Dismas|^(talk) 21:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all the information. I always suspected that there was a difference in ratings between the UK and US at Christmas where British shows can do great ratings, I didn't know it would be the same during the summer.

Certainly as a British person I wish America broadcasters would spread new shows out across the year. You get bombarded with shows from October to May and then you're left with nothing til the next October. --Kiltman67 21:43, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm a Brit too, and my first Christmas in the US - being away from my family - I thought I could take some solace in the fact that I could watch some good television over the Christmas break. Little did I know that the Christmas special is very much a British phenomonen and US television is dire over the festive period. The following year I realised a trip to Las Vegas is a much better use of my Xmas holiday! Rockpocket 22:12, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

One more thing to note is that as production costs have risen, a "full season" of a weekly TV series has become shorter and shorter. Once upon a time (say around 1955, but I don't know how long it lasted) a weekly show had 39 new episodes each year and then went off the air for 3 months -- and it was in that era that the custom was established that the major new shows all start in September. By the 1980s or thereabouts, a season was down to 26 episodes. Now it's typically 22. They're trying to dilute the product as much as they can get away with to cut down costs, right? So they give you a run of new episodes on consecutive weeks to get you in the habit of watching every week, then they turn off the tap for a while and show reruns or something else altogether. --Anon, April 27, 22:36 (UTC).

Some of the continuing shows such as Lost, Jericho, Friday Night Lights and 24 are no longer running reruns. They just go on hiatus. That's because the networks have realized that people are not interested in watching a rerun of the middle episode of a continuing storyline, when rewatching what they saw doesn't make sense. And besides, you can usually catch the episodes you missed on the networks' websites. And 24 has now decided not even to start airing until January, then run all new episodes, then quit. Corvus cornix 23:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)