{"id":3445,"date":"2025-07-25T06:55:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T06:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/?p=3445"},"modified":"2025-07-25T07:02:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T07:02:56","slug":"rating-audiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2025\/07\/25\/rating-audiences\/","title":{"rendered":"Rating audiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

So just now, I was watching an interview with Warren Littlefield, a particularly well known US TV executive who was talking about the development of \u201cFamily Ties\u201d<\/a>. If you know it. it\u2019s the 1980s sitcom starring Michael J Fox, and if you don\u2019t know it, er, it\u2019s still the 1980s sitcom starring Michael J Fox.<\/p>\n

Anyway. Littlefield was praising writer Gary David Goldberg \u2014 and when a TV executive has even heard of the writer, they rise in my opinion \u2014 but specifically about how he was able to listen to what the audience wanted to see and where the audience wanted to go.<\/p>\n

Television is a commercial enterprise, 1980s television was an extremely profitable one, and \u201cFamily Ties\u201d is very good. So I can\u2019t disagree.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t, really, except I realise that I want to. There is something about making a show to suit the audience that feels somehow wrong. It\u2019s not like I\u2019m against audiences, but I am against things like those choose-your-own-adventure books where the reader decides when to kill the monster. You can spin me as much bollocks about interactive storytelling as you want, there has to be a story to be told. And if you are expecting the audience to tell it, I see no reason why they should tell it in front of you.<\/p>\n

Plus there is also the fan effect. The point where your show was so good and fresh that it got actual fans, but now things have tipped over an edge and all you want to do is please those fans.<\/p>\n

With fans of any show, and really I think audiences of any show, what they will tell you they want will always boil down to more of the same. I\u2019ve thought this before, we want to see something again but for the first time. We want to recapture how we were when we first saw it, and despite that being impossible, we can end up criticising a show for moving on.<\/p>\n

No TV executive will ever agree with me, and I will never say they\u2019re wrong, yet I think you have to write whatever it is that you want to write and hope that an audience comes along.<\/p>\n

In other words, my Jane Austen week on 58keys was the most superb fun to make and though it didn\u2019t do brilliantly in my viewing figures, I would do it again in an instant. I\u2019d do it again for me and the fun, and I\u2019d do it again for what great reactions I got.<\/p>\n

It can\u2019t always be about big numbers. Although maybe that\u2019s just a failure of imagination on my part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So just now, I was watching an interview with Warren Littlefield, a particularly well known US TV executive who was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-selfdistract"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-Tz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3445"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3447,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions\/3447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}