Last month I asked readers how we could make "In the Hot Seat" better this year. A lot of people voted and voiced their opinion. There will be changes this year, but I have good news and bad news.
What is "In the Hot Seat"?
"In the Hot Seat" was a competition that I hosted towards the end of the fall season last year, when shows were being canceled/renewed. Instead of voting directly on shows, people voted based off of only ratings graphs. At the end of the competition I revealed which shows were which. It was well received on the whole and gave everyone a change of perspective and the ability to see through the eyes of the people who have to make the decisions to cancel or renew shows.
This year's changes are below.
The Bad News (It's OK. There is more Good News than Bad News)
Most people wanted to cover 10 shows this year. However, I have realized that this is just plain too many to reasonably evaluate for renewal or cancellation. Therefore, I am going to try to get 7 to a graph this year.
The Good News
New SpoilerTV writer Jimmy Ryan had an interesting idea that I really liked. Instead of only having a competition in March I've decided to do one during the Christmas hiatus and the regular one at March. The two will be completely separated events and should be seen as independent. This means they may or may not contain some of the same shows. Because we will have more shows, Jimmy also suggested having some reality shows in the mix. Normally I would have been against anything called "reality", but numbers are numbers and reality shows pull in lots of numbers. This gives readers an even more realistic experience of the network executive. In other words, readers are going to have to read the graphs really carefully.
As far as the other questions I posed to readers I have decided to set a limit of 3 cancellations but only 2 required. While in some cases, this may skew the results, it will allow room for the new pilot shows of the next year.
Last year, we had an 88% accuracy, not counting Unforgettable as it was cancelled and then brought back, so let's shoot for over 90% this year (without cheating of course!) I know we can do it.
If anyone has any questions or suggestions for me please sound off in the comments below.
