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When you think about advertising, it's understanding that whether it's newspaper, radio, or television, you have to know how to advertise, how to market, because ultimately, everything comes down to ratings and revenue or ratings and subscribers and revenue, whether it's newspapers or radio or television.
We give the podium to a lot of people who shouldn't have the podium. The message that's delivered the loudest and in the most entertaining way is the one that we're going to put on because that's what we want. We want ratings more than we want to deliver information. That's just where the culture's gotten.
Every single television product has the ambition to chase ratings, every one of them. Many have other ambitions, for many, ratings are not #1. But my experience on TV, and on the entertainment side, has been entirely ratings-based. When I look at TV I look at ratings. And I never second guess ratings. Never.
The BBC must never be all about ratings - or even mainly about ratings. In the past year, we have made a raft of terrific programmes which stand comparison with the best the BBC has ever done: 'Blue Planet,' 'Walking with Beasts,' 'Son of God,' 'Clocking Off,' 'The Way We Live Now,' 'Conspiracy,' 'Lost World.'
When 'Real People' aired in 1979, we did OK in Los Angeles and New York. What kept that show from being canceled were the ratings from the middle of the country, and that's what kept us in the top five. I learned then from co-hosting that it was important to focus on the country between Los Angeles and New York.
There used to be three networks, and now there are 40 million networks. There's a lot more competition out there, too. We would bring in 27 million people. Now, they're lucky if they have 17. I looked at the ratings, for the first time in 25 years, just to see, and there were 130 shows on. There used to be maybe 30.
Some of the greatest shows in history - 'Seinfeld,' 'Everybody Loves Raymond' and 'House' - had puny starts but the benefit of schedule protection, increasingly scarce in today's DVR world. Cable nets can tolerate small ratings, building hits in progress like 'Breaking Bad,' or marathon their way to a 'Duck Dynasty.'
The best companies with the strongest credit ratings borrow like the United States: on a non-prioritized basis. This means that in the event of a default, all of their debts are of equal priority because lenders and creditors believe default is highly unlikely. And they spend considerable effort maintaining this status.
I was learning this from numerous sources, friends of Hannity, associates of Hannity, who say that off the record, Hannity is complaining about Trump, saying he's a crazy person... But Sean and these other stars of Fox, they're so committed to the business model, to their ratings, they want to make sure their viewers stay tuned.
L.A. is so much about ratings and box office; that defines everything. And here, of course it's important, but it's not part of the culture - there's too much else going on in New York. They're not going to let one industry monopolize your attention, you know? You're likely to have best friends who are architects or newspaper reporters.
There are many different regions around the world, and each region has its own cultural acceptance and legal restrictions as well as different age ratings. There are always things that we're required to do in each different region, which may go counter to the idea that players around the world want the freedom to play whatever they want.
My dad in particular I tend to use - I call him 'The Brain.' If he's accessible, I'd rather put it through his brain. My wife, Melissa, maintains that the closer he is in proximity to me, the less I think for myself. And I think she's actually correct. So anything worth mulling over, I will mull over with my father, and that includes ratings.
That's really what's kept me at 'TYT' even though I've gotten offers where I'd make a lot more money working at other media outlets: There's a value in making sure we inform our audience so they're responsible members of the democratic process. To me, that's more valuable than ratings or money or anything else you can get at these other networks.
I did see the Yahoo Sports story Kevin Iole wrote about how the ratings for TUF go up when there's a women's fight in the episode. I can't lie: it felt really good to see that the UFC fans - not only MMA fans but fans of the UFC who maybe hadn't seen any female fights before February of this year - look forward to watching the women fights so much.
