Jericho: The Finale

JerichoCentral was born from a desire to showcase the Save Jericho campaign in May of 2007; it then evolved into an outlet for Jericho news and information.

This chapter of the Jericho saga is finished. Jericho has been cancelled by the people who can't see the future so it is time for me to move on.

All content will be left online for viewing but I will not continue to post. I would like to thank everyone who contributed, commented, dugg, and those who were faithful readers.

JerichoMonster will remain active but, in coming weeks, will have a different look and broader scope. Jericho will continue to be a part of the Monster.

My friend, Beth, and I are happy to have a new blog named Margie and Edna's Basement. Margie and Edna are fictional characters created by Beth and myself. They have lived in Jericho, Kansas all their lives but have decided it's time for them to branch out beyond their beloved town. We hope you will follow their hilarious adventures.

New Blog Alert

Special announcement:

We are Margie and Edna. We have lived in Jericho, Kansas all our lives but we've decided it's time for us to branch out beyond our beloved town.

We'll still keep you informed of all the gossip-I mean the goings on here in town-but we're also going to talk about anything and everything else.

Please visit us at our new blog: Margie and Edna's Basement.

We do love having company.

TV Commercials: Too Loud

"Evidently there's still confusion in the marketplace about what works online, particularly when it comes to video advertising. Two panels at the Ad Age Digital Conference addressed the proliferation of video across different screens and the issues marketers are still grappling with on these new platforms."



"The other day someone was trying to tell me that TV commercials are much louder than the shows we watch, but I couldn't hear them over the ad that was playing on the television at the time.

In fact, it's not just on television any more. I was watching a Supernatural episode from the CW website and was assaulted with ads that were much louder than the show through my own computer - and that's what got me going on today's Screen Rant.


TV Commercials Are Too Loud, But Don't Ask The TV Stations About It

Television commercial volumes (I'm using TV as my common reference) are too loud and without a doubt, we know it, but according to your local television station, they effectively insult us by telling us we are wrong."

CBS: Jerking Us Around

Are you listening, Moonves?
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"Analytics will be the new Intellectual Property. CBS looked at its own traffic and saw a trend of users “catching up” on what happened previously ahead of new episodes of Jericho and Survivor.

Building communities around content drives engagement. But content producers need to take a holistic view of what a show is. Its not just 8-9pm. When you consider joining groups on Facebook, catching up on previous episodes, reading blogs, etc., a show has a much longer, broader appeal than just its timeslot."



"Today I am launching a new company from the pulver.com Incubator, PrimeTimeRewind.TV. Amit Shafrir and I co-founded this company in 2007.

PrimeTimeRewind.TV provides one click access for consumers to watch the latest episode of their favorite Prime Time TV Shows (assuming the underlying TV Network has made the show available for free online viewing.)

The 2007/2008 television season is the first one in which each of the major US based TV and Cable networks embraced the Internet since the start of the TV season by offering complete episodes of most of their prime-time programs for free to people located in the USA. While this is an exciting development for USA based consumers (access to the online TV content is restricted by geography by each of the respective TV Networks), the discovery and viewing experience on each individual site continues to be rather challenging. Until today, there has not been any single platform available for watching all of the otherwise available Prime Time TV programs; each network requires visiting and hunting through a very different site and different user experience."

TVGuide Presents Skeet Ulrich

Exclusive Skeet Ulrich interview from TVGuide. Thanks Don.

Jericho: Really Good

"I have previously stated that Jericho is pretty good. Now I'd like to upgrade the show to really good. Both of the last two episodes had me on the edge of my seat, and last episode I was totally bawling halfway through.

Kung Fu Monkey says:
It's a become better plotted espionage thriller than 24 ever was on its best day.

It's also sharp commentary on the privatization of warfare, the cozy symbiosis of politicians and massive corporations, out of control contractors in Iraq, and the relationship between the US military and populations they're "administering".

Joining Nielsen

"Nielsen, the television ratings monopolist, finally made its way to my mom. She called me, THRILLED that she had been selected to be a Nielsen family! When I think Nielsen, i think set-top boxes that measure your every channel surf, so I asked if they were going to help her with the installation of the box. She said that she was supposed to just write down what she’s watching every minute of the day. WHAT? I assumed she was embroiled in some mail-in phishing operation, but when I got there and looked at her paperwork — it was legit. Nielsen sent her $15 and a little paper diary so that she could record what she watched, exactly when she changed the channel, when she channel-surfed, where she ended up and for how long, etc. I simply could not believe that that is what was behind the billion-dollar advertising decisions that marketers make."

Continuing Jericho

Roush on Jericho

"Question: I am under the impression that Jericho's comeback was only to conclude the series and give closure to the fans. Is this correct? I heard the network had no intention to continue Jericho, which would explain the fast pace of working through the story. I am one of those fans who felt that the premise of the original storyline was good. It needed work, but it had potential. I waited each week for each show, largely because it was a story that created great discussion based on intelligent thoughts. There isn't much to talk about with most commercial television programming other than, "Did you see the cat fight between Barb and Cindy last night?" Jericho is much better than one more crime or reality/sex/conflict show. Sex, swearing, murder, blood and gore used to be reserved for after 9 pm. Jericho has a little darker storyline, but all ages enjoy it, talk about it and don't have to be afraid of its content, at least so far. I watch very little television, and I have access to only three networks. Taking off Jericho means I will rent more movies.— Sherry "

Les Moonves: Kill American Idol

"With CBS close to losing the total viewers race for the first time in five years, CEO Leslie Moonves called Fox's ratings hit "American Idol" a "monster" and urged somebody to "kill that show."

"While we're in repeats, 'American Idol' continues to be a monster," Moonves said Thursday at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit in New York City. "It's a phenomenon. If somebody would kill that show, I'd really appreciate it. But it's a national phenomenon, and it continues to do extremely well. It's tough to compete with it."



"According to Media Life Magazine, the three big network evening news broadcasts have slipped badly in the key 18 to 34 age bracket. At the same time, though, the Cable news nets have picked up among that same demographic. All three network newscasts have lost numbers since last year, with Katie Couric having the worst slide of the three.

According to Media Life, the main reason the evening news shows have been losing so steadily is because the Internet and Cable can give news at any time the viewer is ready to take their news whereas the evening news must be specifically scheduled into the viewer’s lives. Media Life claims that the 18 to 34 age group just “never got into the evening news habit” – a pretty plausible point."

Steamrolling Nielsen

"BWAHAHAHAHA. Nielsen’s clients continue to rebel against the company’s incompetence. Steamrolling ahead with new audience measurement tactics that it’s clearly not ready for, Nielsen yesterday announced to customers it would use its “live” national sample of TV audiences to test its online viewership initiative, which hopes to measure how many people are watching TV shows on their computers. It’s all apart of their ambitious (and DOA) A2/M2, or “anytime/anywhere,” initiative.

Nielsen has only signed up 375 households, within their 14,000 national sample, to participate in both panels; privacy concerns have kept most households from allowing the company to monitor both mediums. And Nielsen’s big bucks clients don’t like where this is headed.

So not only will Nielsen continue to have trouble delivering its TV ratings data on time, but the already suspect numbers will be even more flawed."



"Bonanza originally aired on Saturday nights beginning the year I was born, 1959. While its rival CBS series had managed to garner good ratings on that particular evening, Bonanza never found its audience. NBC slated it for cancellation, but it received one last chance: a move to Sunday nights.

It was just what the show needed. Ratings skyrocketed, and Bonanza won the yearly ratings crown from 1964 through 1967 as the most popular show in the country."

CBS: Take A Look

"The top 10 highest rated shows on the Web this past week were:

1."American Idol" (32.35 percent)
2."Deal or No Deal" (9.91 percent)
3."America's Most Wanted" (4.62 percent)
4."Survivor" (3.58 percent)
5."Lost" (3.21 percent)
6."Dancing with the Stars" (2.13 percent)
7."America's Next Top Model" (2.12 percent)
8."One Tree Hill" (1.78 percent)
9."Jericho" (1.75 percent)
10."The Biggest Loser" (1.45 percent)"




"It's no longer enough to look simply at ratings when judging the worth of a TV show. That's only part of it. A lot of other factors come into play, and now Publicis-owned agency Optimedia has set about to factor those in to determine a show's true popularity with viewers. A new study ranks the reach and power of broadcast programs based on viewership and buzz across digital and traditional media, and it comes up with some surprising results. "Gossip Girl," the CW show that ranks a mere 115th in TV ratings this season, ranks No. 15 on Optimedia's content power ratings, higher than hits with much bigger TV audiences like ABC's "Private Practice" and CBS's "CSI: NY." Networks are starting to pay more attention to this broader potential audience. Tellingly, "Gossip" has been renewed for another season. Other shows that shot up in content power ratings include NBC's "30 Rock" and "Friday Night Lights," which rank in the 80s for TV and in the top 20 for Optimedia. Greg Kahn, senior vice president and director of strategic resources for Optimedia, talks to Media Life about why such new ways of looking at ratings are crucial to media people, what types of shows rate highly, and why networks are taking the trends into account for the upfront."

New Blog Alert From Terocious

New Blog Alert

From Terocious



Time-shifted numbers are in for the week of Feb, 18-24. This is Ep 2 for Jericho.

Jericho is # 15 out of the the top 20 most time-shifted shows. There was a 22.5% increase over the live numbers.


"In last week's episode of Jericho (Tuesdays at 10 pm/ET, CBS), "Oversight," a gun-toting Bonnie Richmond (Shoshannah Stern) went out in a blaze of glory, fighting to save her family home. The image of Bonnie's big brother, Stanley — played by Brad Beyer — cradling his sister's lifeless corpse was a heartbreaker. Here, Beyer shares his thoughts on how Bonnie's death will propel Season 2's final episodes, the fabulous Alicia Coppola (who plays Mimi), a Jericho movie and why violence can sometimes be, well, funny."

We Should All Count

Awesome website with Nielsen info.

"Do you think less than 10,000 handpicked households should dictate what more than 250 million people watch on television? Neither do we. Now you can do something about it.

Welcome to WeShouldALLCount.com: America's single resource for the latest news and filings related to the erinMedia federal antitrust suit against Nielsen Media Research (NMR)."
+++++++++++++


"The CBS Audience Network is the web’s first professional online video network distributing CBS entertainment, news and sports content to as much of the Web as possible. Partnerships with leading edge community building and social application providers enables users to discover and personalize CBS content and allows users to easily incorporate CBS clips into their profiles, websites, blogs, widgets, wikis and community pages.

Benefits to Advertising in the CBS Audience Network:

The #1 Television network is NOW ONLINE
The most widely distributed professional video content network on the web*
The most engaged video audience on the web – 2x higher than the closest network competitor^
Content Diversity: featuring web friendly short-form and full length episodes
Community Diversity: reaching ALL of the web’s demographic and psychographic profiles
CBS Online video consumption growing 200% year over year
Research: custom quantitative and qualitative data on advertising performance and viewer engagement
Advertising Creative Diversity: custom advertising units, overlays, in-stream advertising

Jericho: A Boondoggie Recollection

This is an article written last May by Boondoggie at Find-the-boots. I thought it deserves another read.


"But the most interesting part of this story isn't that some fans got left high and dry, it's that the business model failed everyone. The Nielson Ratings system, which hasn't changed much since their introduction in the 1940s and violates every possible rule on randomness of sample (can you say "self selected"?), has only recently started tracking time shifted viewing. And the networks don't take that into account in their advertising rates. So take a show that will appeal to well-off, intelligent people with disposable income and put it up against a pop pablum spree like American Idol, and you'll conclude that no one is watching. I'll posit that Jericho viewers are much more likely to have a DVR and less likely to be Nielson families. And they're far more likely to have a broadband internet connection to view the shows off services such as Itunes. The concept of watching two shows at once, which is now quite commonplace, just isn't built into the ratings system.

Which leads me to a conclusion: Old media really is dead. The idea of selling advertising in exchange for eyeballs just isn't going to make it. The "science" for measuring performance hasn't kept up. Anything you do to try to measure viewership will be self selected, by definition. It takes a certain kind of person to put up with a monitoring box in their house or to keep a diary. And those aren't the same people that are spending money on high tech gadgets like DVRs and Slingboxes. Or burning episodes to DVD from their Tivo so they can watch them on a plane.

Eventually "free" TV is going to be useless. The quality of shows will continue their downward trend as the intelligent and well-off move into other forms of entertainment. The old media will just keep producing more reality shows or mean comedies because they're the least expensive to produce. When your market is dwindling, the urge to cut costs is overwhelming. Look at the difference between the programming on paid channels (SciFi, HBO, Showtime) vs the old media. This trend has been going on a long time."

Tell CBS What You Watch

Become a member of the First Watch! today by taking the survey and answering a few questions about Watch! and yourself. As a thank you for your time, you will be entered to win one of 10 boxed sets of CBS DVDs!

One of the questions asks what you watch on CBS, and although Jericho is not on the list there is a write in space. The survey asks lots of demographic and marketing questions, so this tells CBS a lot about each viewer.

You may also write in the names of your favorite actor/actress on CBS.




"Here's where you come in. CBS needs to know that the serialized and complex nature of Jericho is not a turn-off for the average TV viewer. Beyond that, CBS needs to know that the political nature of the show, and the implications of the show are interesting to a large majority of people, I'd imagine, at the least, to the readers of this here blog.

If you're looking for something to capture your imagination, without having to know physics and math, you might want to give Jericho a try. If you like the pacing of Heroes, but found it just a little too slap-stick and light-hearted, Jericho has what you're looking for.

So, gather here each week as I walk us into the walls of Jericho. Know that every episode you watch on CBS.com will contribute to the cause, and send CBS a clear message, like the Israelites sent Jericho a clear message marching around the walls of the once-great city."

Online: CBS Ad Rates

"CBS said ad spots for TV shows it airs on its online "Audience Network" are selling for more than $20 per thousand viewers -- a higher rate than the network charges when it broadcasts the same shows on your TV in prime time. There's two ways to view a stat like that. The first: It shows that the CBS's online audience is much smaller than its broadcast one. CPMs are a function of both price and reach. But the more positive view is that the price also reflects the fact that online viewers tend to be more engaged with the advertising and a lot younger than network TV (median age 38, compared to 53 for TV)."


The fourth Jericho blog carnival.

Thanks to Amy at RemoteAccess


"Is anyone else out there a "Jericho" fan? When I first saw this "new" flag of the "Allied States of America", I thought, "WTF?" And, for the last few episodes, every time they show it, every time they take down the flag of the United States and put up the new flag, I can't help but have a feeling of queasy unease. I guess that's the first question I would ask if we would have to reconstitute ourselves, would we choose a new flag? The Iraqis have tried to do it twice without much success."

Online: CBS Ad Rates

"CBS said ad spots for TV shows it airs on its online "Audience Network" are selling for more than $20 per thousand viewers -- a higher rate than the network charges when it broadcasts the same shows on your TV in prime time. There's two ways to view a stat like that. The first: It shows that the CBS's online audience is much smaller than its broadcast one. CPMs are a function of both price and reach. But the more positive view is that the price also reflects the fact that online viewers tend to be more engaged with the advertising and a lot younger than network TV (median age 38, compared to 53 for TV)." The fourth Jericho blog carnival Thanks to Amy at RemoteAccess "Is anyone else out there a "Jericho" fan? When I first saw this "new" flag of the "Allied States of America", I thought, "WTF?" And, for the last few episodes, every time they show it, every time they take down the flag of the United States and put up the new flag, I can't help but have a feeling of queasy unease. I guess that's the first question I would ask if we would have to reconstitute ourselves, would we choose a new flag? The Iraqis have tried to do it twice without much success."

Online: CBS Ad Rates

"CBS said ad spots for TV shows it airs on its online "Audience Network" are selling for more than $20 per thousand viewers -- a higher rate than the network charges when it broadcasts the same shows on your TV in prime time.

There's two ways to view a stat like that. The first: It shows that the CBS's online audience is much smaller than its broadcast one. CPMs are a function of both price and reach. But the more positive view is that the price also reflects the fact that online viewers tend to be more engaged with the advertising and a lot younger than network TV (median age 38, compared to 53 for TV)."



The fourth Jericho blog carnival

Thanks to Amy at RemoteAccess


"Is anyone else out there a "Jericho" fan?

When I first saw this "new" flag of the "Allied States of America", I thought, "WTF?" And, for the last few episodes, every time they show it, every time they take down the flag of the United States and put up the new flag, I can't help but have a feeling of queasy unease.

I guess that's the first question I would ask if we would have to reconstitute ourselves, would we choose a new flag? The Iraqis have tried to do it twice without much success."

Quincy Smith: Diving In

"The bigger question: What does CBS plan to do with a small company - now around 16 people -- that makes web video? Digital boss Quincy Smith says that deal was meaningful for CBS -- "2006 was the year of experimentation. We're not just touching our toes in the water anymore." -- but is also clear about the big picture: CBS isn't going to shift its core focus from making and distributing broadcast TV shows. We're not quite sure where that leaves the Wallstrip guys -- there's a lot of talk about "infusing their DNA" into CBS, which confuses us a bit -- but we're happy to watch their stuff, regardless."




"The other Tuesday night SF show had much lower numbers by comparison but still showed fair ratings for the LIVE watching crowd. “Jericho” garnered a 1.8/5 share for its efforts, or close to 6 million fans tuning in. While that is nothing to hoop and holler about, this is one particular show that has shown it does much better with the TiVo/DVR crowd and it will be interesting to see what those numbers reveal. After the gripping, and quite shocking conclusion to this Tuesday’s episode, “Jericho” has proven it deserves a third season. We can only hope that CBS is sharp enough to realize that."

Missing Bonnie Richmond

It was a sad episode of Jericho this week when Bonnie died. I will really miss her and Shoshannah as well. Thank you, Shoshannah, for all the hard work you did for Jericho. You are a fine actress and I'll be watching you spread your wings and soar again soon.

Kudos to Emily Rose for her fine performances. I love that she's joined the cast and hope she returns for Season 3. She is impressive.

Finally, I've always liked Skeet and still do but this man's talent has burst forth this season. He seems to be putting his all into every scene and it shows. We appreciate Skeet.
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Congratulations to Nina Tassler. Thank you for your efforts.


"CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler will be honored with the National Champion for Children Award by the Alliance for Children’s Rights at a March 10 gala in Beverly Hills.

According to the organization, Tassler is being honored “for her dedication and commitment to the organization’s mission. She is a strong advocate for children living in poverty in the Los Angeles area and has played an active role for the Alliance for Children’s Rights, most recently attending and supporting a Thanksgiving dinner for youth who have aged out of foster care without a family or permanent support system.”