No way to prove, but I think we can make a reasonable inference. Ticket sales at my local theater were down in 2020, and I guess its possible they will continue at that level after the pandemic, but I think its reasonable to infer they will go back up. I’m not saying the inference is as strong for major television events, but still reasonable.
This is why I included a hypothesis (a specific, testable prediction). If GGA ratings go up next time, but are still lower than the time before, I will be right; if they stay the same or go down, then you will be. On Fri, 5 Mar 2021 at 10:25 AM Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 5:46 PM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I Agree with you about all of these ratings discussions except this year >> during the pandemic. >> >> For some years now I have been posting here after every major sports or >> awards event that has falling ratings that gets attributed to politics or >> whatnot that that is mostly noise, and the signal has been a steady fall in >> the number of Americans watching TV. My argument has been that for these >> discussions what is really relevant is the percent decline in ratings, >> compared both to other major events that year, and to that event’s rate of >> decline over last decade. >> >> Almost certainly the GG ratings would have been worse this year than last >> year regardless, but also almost certainly not as bad as they were in this >> pandemic year. My prediction is that The next GG show that takes place >> after a mostly opened up society will have ratings higher that this year >> but lower than last year, roughly on the line of historical declines in >> ratings prior to the pandemic. >> > > INtuitively that makes sense. But we have two data points, last year and > this year's ratings, and there's no way to prove what this year's ratings > would be without the pandemic. If the pandemic started a year ago went away > after two or three months then things would have snapped back to "normal" > and we would expect the ratings to follow historical trends. But this > disruption has gone on long enough to break habits and automatically made > choices. And once the habit is broken it doesn't just reappear when the > circumstances change. There are a lot of factors that would point to the > opportunity for the Golden Globes to be a smash hit this year: It's a live > event, it's airing for free, and the largest number of Americans ever are > sitting at home looking for something to do. The fact that so few chose to > watch tells me that the actual number of viewers is as much as they were > going to get. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiGUrnyP4XuPYaF%2B%2BHSzPvmaEcoSGdZjmjfD8ySR%3D%3DBZiQ%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiGUrnyP4XuPYaF%2B%2BHSzPvmaEcoSGdZjmjfD8ySR%3D%3DBZiQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYLYJoGL%3DdGUbF5C5K2gZmXSsgV7eKhZbC1hO1R4u7iSfw%40mail.gmail.com.
