Year: 2006

The autism thing continues…

16 October 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Someone at Slate theorised a while ago that television causes increased likelihood of getting autism. He’s at it again, but this time he has ‘proof’. Some people at Cornell and Purdue think there’s a relationship, too.

The trouble is, these people aren’t doctors but are economists at various management schools. For the scientifically inclined, here’s a link to their paper (PDF), which obfuscates things a whole lot less than the Slate article. It’s worth noting the paper hasn’t been sent to any peer-reviewed journals, but I’ll leave others to find the other, highly amusing boo-boos in their actual work.

I would point out though that:

  1. Rainfall in the area isn’t necessarily the best indicator of television-viewing habits among 0-4 year olds
  2. In a test to see if television can make people more prone to autism, the control group really shouldn’t be “those who can’t afford cable”.
US TV

Third-episode verdict: Runaway

16 October 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Runaway

Runaway, aka “The Fugitive and his family” has been bumbling along for three weeks or so now: time for third-episode verdict. I’m going to stamp it with an almighty “average”.

It’s improved slightly since the distinctly unimpressive first episode, but it’s still failing to come up with any interesting story thread, unlike Vanished (for all that show’s silliness), and the characters aren’t desperately involving either. Oh no, little Jimmy is going to have to flunk the Spelling Bee or else his photo will be taken and they’ll be caught! How awful.

I’m predicting a slow, lingering death for this one, unless someone puts it out of its misery. Don’t get caught up in it.

Robin Hood losing viewers

16 October 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

I haven’t watched the second episode of Robin Hood yet. In that, I’m not alone, according to the ratings: the Hood has lost 1.5 million viewers since its first episode, dropping from 8.2 million to 6.7 million.

Now, I didn’t hate the first episode, and I thought kids would probably enjoy it. Others disagreed. However, I do think it worth pointing out that a drop like that really isn’t unprecedented, with both good shows and bad, and happens with most shows between their first and second episodes. In fact, it happened between the first and second episodes of the first new series of Doctor Who: that started with 9.9 million viewers in week one and had 7.3 million viewers for the second episode. Yet no one declares that a massive flop.

So, given it’s already been picked up at Mipcom by a huge number of countries, I wouldn’t write off Robin yet, no matter how pants it may (or may not) be.

UK TV

Mobisodes none too popular

16 October 2006 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

TardisodesApparently, those Doctor Who mobisodes (aka TARDISodes) were none too popular. Although 2.6 million people downloaded them onto their home computers, only 40,000 people watched them on their mobile phones.

Iain Tweedale, the new media editor for BBC Wales, points out that the pricing to download mobisodes – £1.50 to £2 – probably put a load of people off, particularly when all they had to do was watch them for free on their home computer. But I think there were a couple of other obvious problems:

  1. They were only a minute long and nothing happened in them really
  2. They didn’t feature either the Doctor or Rose.

So £2 to download something that wasn’t actually very interesting, £26 to download the whole season’s worth. You could get several DVDs for that price. I know which I’d rather watch.

Still, Lost is going to up the ante in the US with mobisodes that star the actual cast members, and Battlestar Galactica‘s webisodes already did more or less the same thing. So maybe next series’ will be better.