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A friend and I were discussing the recent episodes of 24. One thing we noticed that ever since the 2nd season, every crisis involves some innocent youngster killing off the one and only lead CTU had.

In fact, up to the 5th season now, the writters had only been able to surprise us in major plot twists like killing off major characters at the beginning of this season. Every season we see the same torture, the same Jack-being-the-prime-suspect, the same Terrorist's friend/relative tippng CTU off .

Writing stories for the same character is hard. Writing for the same group of people, doubly so. The audience get attached to the characters. They grew comfortable with him/her acting in a certain way, and with that, the writer's freedom to explore new territories narrowed considerably, and quickly.


Right, and Wrong. We are really not the paying customers of TV Network. Advertisers are paying the bills so that we can watch TV, along with their messages on their products. Series producers get paid producing shows that get eyeballs / attention, TV Network sell these eyeballs to the advertisers, and we get to watch TV for free, yay.

So in theory, series producers really ought to be making better shows that leads to more eyeballs and better results for advertisers, and we get to watch better TV. My friend would be right on the money with her statement.

The problem is, better shows don't always lead to more eyeballs. Shows that are on the proven bath appeal to the vast majority. If you write a plot that is too complicated, you run the risk of losing the audience, and you're not doing due diligence to the network and advertisers.

The business model of TV Ultimately encourage factory style production of shows that remains just good enough to glue the audience to their screen. The only feedback system is the out-dated ratings system, essentially a poor statistical analysis with a fixed and extremely small sample size.

This is why I am excited about the iTunes Video Store, and the wave of video-on-demand-download services, and the wave of copycat paid-video-content-services that will be available. Firefly, which was cancelled by FOX network due to poor ratings, was already rumoured to have a second life direct-to-iTunes season. With paid content, producers are more inclined to produce quality flicks without the constrains by the network.