Todd, after quoting my quip about FOX has a tendency to cancel its best shows, on the TV show Arrested Development: “For a while I've had this thought that watching AD is like surfing the web. The show has an overt narrator, wonderfully voiced over by Ron "Speilberg-Lite" Howard, and that narrator provides us with numerous cut-away example and sample clips that support, explain or contradict things the characters in the show say and do. The clips, like hyperlinks used for the same reasons on web page, come from all over: surveillance video, home movies, still shots of print publications. They hit you like you might hit a linked page - quickly, somewhat disjointedly, yet somehow appropriate, before returning to the flow of the show. It's a different kind of tv, and it's part of what makes this show so enjoyable.”

Dave Pollard on House MD, another FOX show, which I haven't seen an episode of: “The attempt by the hacks to damage House is clearly evident (the hospital administrators are predictably corrupt and ludicrously manipulative and out to 'get' our hero -- they force him in the latest episode to choose between firing one of his brilliant interns or shilling for a new overpriced drug; and the way-too-pretty young people on the staff are being given more close-ups and featured in vapid, simple subplots) but what is remarkable is that the show seems to have found a way to accommodate this interference without losing its edge. A particularly fine episode, Fidelity, has a convoluted, stunning plot and a merciless, horrifyingly human ending. It would make a wonderful stage play. And House's spare and savage come-backs and asides are still original, lovingly crafted and totally believable. House is tailor-made to be the stereotypical rude and short-tempered medical specialist, yet Laurie and the writers refuse to allow him to be caricaturized -- with each episode he grows deeper and more engaging and complex.”

Jon Gertner wrote an article—as yet unread by yours truly—that suggests that TV ratings are so hard to measure that any data they provide is useless. (This is also an idea that comes out of The Wisdom of Crowds as well.) The point is twofold: the major broadcasters are probably going to have to start listening to the conversations around their shows rather than find out raw numbers of how many people are "watching" them, but now that they release TV shows on DVD as quick as they do, they might be able to use the raw data—DVD's sold, amount of money that the DVD's brought in, etc.—to figure out whether they should keep producing the show, or in Family Guy's case, bring the show back.

All the shows listed above are FOX shows, probably because they are shown on one of the three—the number fluctuates to as high as five—TV channels I get. I'm actually considering getting cable again, if only to 'watch' baseball games, or rather have them as background noise and watch the plays when I hear the crack of the bat. I do know that TV, before not having cable, was a time-sink, and there are multiple episodes of The Simpsons repeats that I know I'd end up watching.