From: John Conover <john@email.johncon.com>
Subject: forwarded message from John Conover
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 19:52:44 -0700
I understand it. Sesame Street has the same demographics, on Saturday,
AM, while mom and pop have other agendas than to entertain the kids,
(unless the kids are kinky.) Now, whether the Presidential Debates
interrupted a marital, or otherwise, operational necessity, (as in a
coitus thing-remember it was late, 9:00, or so,) or only appealed to
children remains an issue for statistical interpretation. (The Super
Bowl seems to do well, with about 60% of the TAM, and somewhat
deceasing over the last decade, as an interesting American
demographic. BTW. Desert Storm did well, at least as a TV production,
but not as well as soccer, at least in international markets. Auto
sports was a distant second after soccer. See
http://www.nielsen.com. The Presidential debates don't rank in the top
100 events, over a 4 year period-in point of fact, more folks watched
the famous Apple commercial, created by Regis McKenna-the one that
indirectly attacked IBM with the athlete hurling the sledge hammer at
the giant TV screen watched by zombies-in the 1983 super bowl than
watched the Presidential Debates last night.)
John
BTW, it would make things more interesting to stage the debates the
night before the vote-and thus invalidate the various pollster's
efforts. Let the politicians go for broke-bet it all on one
day. (Actually, the guy in second would have a decided game-theoretic
advantage if it was done this way-the game-theoretic solution to the
"Mexican standoff," is to shoot first-same is true in political
concepts-see the stuff on the prisoner's dilemma by Luce, et al, ie.,
if you are in second, go for broke-another of science's most profound
insights. I mean, the debates would be interesting enough to compete
with Lucy re-runs.) Statistical demographics a month before the
election in a country that has a conceptual half life that is a little
less than a week, (typical numbers from a PR person,) doesn't make any
sense. Who markets such things? Where is the PR agent? Who decided
to hold it 30 days before the vote? I'm just an engineer, and such
decisions are dumb. Really dumb.
--
John Conover, john@email.johncon.com, http://www.johncon.com/