Thanks for posting Joe.  That helps me out a lot. 

Thanks for the link.

It's been interesting learning all about the ratings system. I never really paid attention until I started watching Castle.

MissWanderer said:

Thanks Joe! That helped me out. I never understood how it worked and how to interpret those numbers.

So, considering Castle's ratings for 3x16 for example, with a 2.6 in the 18-49 demo, it means that about two-thirds (more or less) of the Castle viewers are older than 49?

There are a couple of other things what should be taken into consideration when the ratings are mentioned.

1. The there are sub-goups in the demo, like the 18-49 females, or 18-39 age groups and so on. If a show has a well targeted audience which means a higher than average ratings in a particular group (like Castle wins the 18-49 female regularly) it is an extra benefit. Advertisers prefer to spend their money targeted, not only in general. If you see on the ABC site the advertisements before the clips, most of them are targeted for women, not by chance. So even if the overal ratings are not perfect, winning an important customer group regularly is a strong card in any argument.

2. Even though the higher the better is always true when we talk about the ratings, it is also important how and where that rating is achieved. If the rating of a show is lower than the average of the channel other programs, it is a bad news for the show, no matter that the numbers are better than other similar shows on different channels. Eg. a show with 2.2 rating can be stellar on one channel and a failure on another one.

3. Also must be taken into account that how big is competition in house. CBS is very strong in crime procedural shows with strong ratings, so they can dismiss a show with relatively high ratings if it is below the average of the genre on that channel. On ABC Castle is the only successful crime procedural, so until there are no other show of that kind which has at least as good numbers as Castle has, it has a secure position.

jrabbit said:

So is "Body of Proof" going to be a "competitor" to Castle in the crime scene procedural? If it takes off will that impact Castle's "standing" as THE ABC police procedural?

 

BTW only watch an hour or so of the Oscars, and saw ONE promo for Castle (the kiss), and several full "30 second" trailers for "Body of Proof".

Where there more ad's earlier or later in the broadcast?

My understanding from the TV Guide cover story is that one of the "problems" in promoting Castle for ABC is that they do not have a lot of procedurals to cross promote.  So, I guess the conventional wisdom is that people who watch procedurals are "predisposed" to like other procedurals, making them a good place to promote Castle.  At least I think that's what they were saying.  That would mean that Body of Proof would be a good vehicle to promote Castle and visa-versa, as the viewers are predisposed to like procedurals.

I'm not sure how important the standing of Castle and Body of Proof  is in comparison and if they should be considered competitors.  It's not like ABC should be terribly picky and only have one procedural, doesn't make sense.  There's room for more, IMO, as people love procedurals.  Look how well CBS does with them every week.  Hopefully B of P will be successful and ABC will have another procedural in their stable.  And as a positive side effect,  ABC can have more opportunities to promote Castle.   Now if ABC were top heavy in procedurals like CBS I suppose that they would be in competition with each other to a certain extent.  But as they are not,  I'm not sure it's an issue.

I missed the first part of the Oscars, but I saw three Castle promos, could have been better (more), but not too bad.  

dmcw said:

I didn't want to start a new topic for this, but I saw it linked on another board and thought it was an interesting article (and it ties in a bit to the ratings issue).  It basically discusses what makes successful TV these days:

http://www.thetvaddict.com/201…..n-viewers/

It's an interesting article, thanks.  Makes you realize how rare it is that, thanks to such a talented group of people, Castle has generated that "magic" and quality and translated it into success.