Who watches CBS?

[olrac]

I am utterly lost when I try to find an explanation for the TV ratings that CBS enjoys.

I'm in my early 30s. I don't watch any programming on CBS. I haven't for many years. Not one program in its line-up has any appeal to me.

I have dozens of friends, ranging from their early teens to mid-50s, and all socioeconomic classes. Not one of them watches any CBS shows.

I asked at work, where I'm one of the youngest out of several dozen. Again, not a single CBS watcher, except for one co-worker who says she occasionally watches NCIS.

So what's going on??? Who is watching this channel? What demographics? What regions of the US?

[will.15]

I watch one, NCIS.

[Holden Pike]

The one and only prime time CBS show I like a lot and actively seek out is "How I Met Your Mother". I'll watch "The Big Bang Theory" and "Accidentally On Purpose" if I don't change the channel, but I don't care about them either way and find them the very definition of "average". And I do enjoy "The Mentalist", though I don't think it's cutting edge television or anything and I push came to shove I would rather watch ABC's "Castle" or pretty much any of the current slate of the USA Network crime shows ("Psych", "In Plain Sight", "White Collar", "Burn Notice"). So "How I Met Your Mother" and "The Mentalist" are the only ones I record each week.

And for late night, I watch "The Late Show with David Letterman" every single night and Craig Furgeson's "Late Late Show" sporadically.


That's it for me and the Tiffany Network. I don't watch any of their reality shows (or any reality show on any network, for that matter) and find their stable of "CSI" and "NCIS" shows as well as the pair of chicks who talk to ghosts shows all insufferable and I won't even watch ten minutes of any of them.


But to be fair, I don't watch a whole lot of network TV anymore in total. On ABC the only must-sees week in and week out at this point are "Better Off Ted" and "Castle" as the only two absolutes, though I do like "Modern Family" and "Cougar Town" quite a bit and think both have potential to be better than average sitcom fare if given a chance to run a while. But that's it for me and ABC.

On NBC they have those great Thursday comedies that really set the bar: "The Office", 30 Rock", "Community" and "Parks and Recreation". But other than those four, the original "Law & Order" is the only other NBC show I watch. I wouldn't watch Jay frippin' Leno in prime time or late night or early morning or in a box or with a fox or on a train or in the rain. I don't like him. At all.

On FOX the one and only show I care about the whole week is "The Simpsons". I can't even stand any of Seth McFarlane's shows, and not anything else at all the entire week.



So now you know. I don't know who in the fart is watching "NCIS: Los Angeles" or "The Ghost Whisperer" and all that crap, but it ain't me. And all of my grandparents are dead, so I know it's not them either.

[Plainview]

Two And A Half Men is a good show on CBS. Its pretty funny for what it is. Plus who does not like Charlie.

[Holden Pike]

...who does not like Charlie?

Me.

[TheUsualSuspect]

How I Met Your Mother is great. I just noticed recently they had a laugh track.

[ProfGreen]

I'm a big fan of the original USA programming. The newest one, White Collar, is my favorite. It just finished up it's first season a few weeks ago, with a major cliff hanger, but will be returning on Tuesday, January 19 at 10pm. Did anyone else catch the first season?

[olrac]

Two And A Half Men is a good show on CBS. Its pretty funny for what it is. Plus who does not like Charlie.

Honestly, I would put that show near the top of my list for WORST sitcoms ever made, just a few spots below Method & Red. I've never understood how that show gets viewers, but then According To Jim seemed to last forever, and I've never met one person who has admitted to watching even one episode.

I watched about half of one of the first episodes of How I Met Your Mother and couldn't get into it.

I don't watch much TV, but I do enjoy The Office, Parks & Rec, 30 Rock, Modern Family, IASIP and South Park. Despite being a bit bored with their tired writing, I still tune in for Heroes, Lost and L&O: SVU. I still like the other 2 L&O shows, but they're also both suffering from bad writing (the result of poor ratings, I guess).

I don't really watch late-night shows, but when I do it's Conan. Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Kimmel are tolerable, but I couldn't be paid to watch Letterman or Jimmy Fallon. If I were about 50 years older, Letterman might appeal to me, but I doubt it.

I wonder if it's a regional thing. Does Nielsen track viewership by geography?

[will.15]

They track geographically. That's partly why, when they first started getting numbers for all that stuff, CBS axed all their popular hayseed sitcoms from the 1960's because it wasn't attracting the type of viewers attractive to advertisers.

Letterman was brilliant in the eighties when he came on after Carson, but he sold out. He used to be hilariously nasty to his more vapid celebrities, but that narrowed the celebrities willing to go on his show. Now he goes out of his way to be nice and the uneasy insincerity is obvious.

[karibou]

Two And A Half Men is a good show on CBS. Its pretty funny for what it is. Plus who does not like Charlie.

He does a pretty funny imitation of a drunk guy. But the kid (Angus Jones?) always makes me want to eat junk food.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v373/kariboux/burger.gif

[will.15]

I used to watch Two and a Half Men, but for me it jumped the shark when the kid reached puberty.

[honeykid]

I watch Criminal Minds, Medium and How I Met Your Mother.

I only started watching HIMYM about 6 weeks ago though. It was a repeated run of last season (as a run in for the new season which started this week here) and, for no reason in particular, I decided to give it another go and really went for it.