One of my favourite Vancouver bloggers - Darren Barefoot - posts about the recent phenomenon of television networks using a lot of their ad slots to advertise other shows on their network. He links to a study that shows that “Only one in four 12- to 34-year-olds can name all four major broadcast networks: ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.”

I was having a conversation about this recently with a friend. I was complaining that NBC felt the need to remind me at every opportunity during the finale that they were the idiots responsible for canceling my favourite television show, The West Wing. While I suppose ‘any press is good press’ as they say, I have to say that not only do I not care what network produces the shows I watch, I will never make a viewing decision based on the network. They simply don’t matter, except to themselves in a business sense. So I guess what I mean is that they don’t matter to the consumer.

And while I’m sure NBC wanted us to think “thank you NBC for bringing me 7 years of the West Wing”, all I ended up thinking is “Go f^&k yourselves, NBC, for canceling the best show on TV which could easily have run another 7 years.” So maybe I will make a viewing decision based on network, but not in the way they were hoping.