Originally posted by mswood: So while Survivor is the superior ratings performer, I don't think I would use the adjective "Vastly".
Fair enough, if you are ignoring history and just looking at the most recent season. I was responding to someone that questioned CBS's commitment to TAR based upon timeslot changes, format changes, etc... for TAR over the years. There is clear and irrefutable evidence over the span of times that the two shows have aired that Survivor has been the 'vastly' superior ratings performer. The gap narrowing going forward doesn't really speak to the reasons why TAR has had timeslot changes, the family edition, or 'gimmick' rules changes.
Side note: I doubt CBS is the reason for things like the Yield and Intersection (though they did have a hand in Rob/Amber). Show producers make most of those changes, not the network. Survivor has had plenty of 'gimmick' format changes over the years as well. The producers are simply trying to keep the show from getting stale; something that TAR's format struggles with even more than Survivor's.
Actually TAR (with one major cycle exception) as been fairy stable since season 5 (which is the real starting point for ratings building doing very well for the summer months). Airing at 9pm on Tuesdays the show managed sizable ratings (during summer) and built for the next two seasons.
The switch to Tuesdays at 10pm hurt the show dramatically for season 9 (and of course I am sure the fact that the Family edition erode some of the viewers leading to this cycle didn't help). Then switching that same cycle to Wednesday at 9pm then Wednesday at 8pm for the remaining few episodes didn't help. But really besides that (and again part of that decline had to be do to the family edition and not just the schedule change) I can't fault the network for scheduling except for the huge blunder of not ordering two cycles for this current season. While TAR (like Survivor, not to mention most shows) does have a typical decline in viewers during the spring, knowing that they had the strong possibility of a writers strike to not order the producers to green light a season was Stupid in the extreme because they could always hold that season off for summer or fall if the strike didn't occur).
Really the only other things have been cuts to the budget of the show, which is the reason for the elimination of the Fast Forward (it might as well not be there at all), to far fewer casting calls (which probably puts more people from LA area in the cast), the cutting of episode orders (that pisses me off), the cutting out of two hour episodes for the opener, and the network asking them to shake things up.
Now some of those make no sense to me. The cutting back on the two hour openers is ludicrous. They aren't filming more footage, they are just editing it as a two hour episode instead of a one hour one. And they have typically managed higher ratings performance then the season average (often considerable higher) in both demo and total viewers.
The cutting back to episodes to 11 instead of 13. Sure I could understand that during seasons 1-4 (and even 9), but not now. It isn't logical. And even after another strong season, they have still kept the lower episode order.
