#even that last bracketed tag i’m half-expecting to get someone screaming ‘SO YOU THINK ALL PALESTINIANS ARE TERRORISTS?!?!!?!!’

[mitzirockerextendeduniverse]

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[incarnateirony]

Ratings for Dummies

An explanation kit to those having to deal with people who spew mindless garbage about higher or lower viewers on a given week.

I'm going to begin this with a challenge: if you've been copy-pasted this as a default retort for doing the above, I dare you to read all of it. If you're 100% confident in your opinion, and educated on your reasoning beyond a random corner of the internet number set pulled out of your butt and recited ad nauseum, you should be able to postulate a reply instead of "UR STUPID." - Anything else, you either have to internalize a debate about how often you've made yourself look like a complete jackoff to the fandom and TPTB, or just knowing and willfully spread disinformation. You are encouraged to cross-search ratings talk when I start busting out techie terms - because contrary to how the fandom likes to fling ratings around, there is in fact a science to this.

Let's start with

What are raw viewers worth?

Jack shit.

I mean if one ep had 80,000 more people watching it-

It still doesn't mean jack shit.

That doesn't make sense.

Okay so here's where we get into some real-world talk.

If you think for a second, for a moment's glance, that the entirety of any TV show's following are like us, in the deep end of the fandom, humping press releases and tracking character appearances, tuning in for any time someone breathes a character's name, you have an incredibly distorted version of reality to begin with.

But you said some characters have base loyalty...

Character loyalty does have impact, to some measure. For example, between seasons 11-12-13 Castiel maintained a 72,000-74,000 character exclusive draw per episodes that featured him (which IS a base allure of roughly 0.028 to 0.035 depending on the viewership night). And no, that doesn't mean only 70K~ people are fans of his. That means there's 70K~ people that are humping promos with dedication enough to know and tune in only for his presence. Now, you don't have to be a math wizard to know that this is about 4% of routine audience being dedicated explicitly and only to Castiel (1.7-8 million base viewership / 74k = 23~; 100/23 - you get the point.) 

So yes. Character loyalty impacts numbers. We can't really give J2 exclusive numbers, because, well, J2 are in every episode - ergo we can't really determine their independent draw, especially minding that for example Castiel is himself expected in half episodes, other recurring characters in quarters of episodes and so on ad infinitum, and we have very little measure of how well the show will handle with only them.

Oh, wait, we do. It was season 7. Keep that in mind. We'll get back to this point.

But this is where that ends. Because a lot of the viewers are just that: interested in the full dynamic of a show. Many are what you'd call casual viewers, but many casual viewers are also dedicated in their own standards. Swathes of people who have watched the show since the dawn of time have never poked into social media. They never looked into show or fandom politics. They simply tune in and enjoy the complete picture.

This is what your real core demographic is. I've seen fans talk about "We're the core dem-" STFU. Really. Get over yourselves. At the peak that movement had 400 heads to it and since then most have utterly quit the show or idled out. There's roughly 200 active at this point. So I want you to realize what a piss in the bucket that is. We can get into the absolutely failed Tombstone boycott as a perfect example later on. But for now, we need to get to how ratings /actually/ work.

Well then, is it demos that matter?

To some extent, yes, but that's a microcosm in a much more complex macrocosm, and to get to that, first you need to understand the values of the "True" and "Plus" systems, what they are, and why they exist. To do this, you need to understand

The death of network television

When Supernatural first started in 2005, we had an entirely different entertainment landscape. Cell phones were bricks without internet (as even reflected in early show), most people were on dialup and if lucky, lowgrade DSL we'd laugh at modernly; there was no streaming, DVR was a pricy alternate feature on top of already pricy cable less than half of american homes had. Rabbit ears were still a very real thing until 2009 when the Digital Television Relay transition took effect. 2005-2009 was a transition point into cable being considered common and, even after this period, a large portion of the population still didn't have it and it was basically mandated at a certain point and stations everywhere had to flip across. This may be shocking to anyone under the age of 30, but /not everybody had cable when SPN started./ In fact, only a minority did.

Why is this important? Because the death of network television is important before I even get to explaining the "Plus" system and why it /exists./

Cable and Sat TV's been around for a while. Back in the old days, people got these giant assed antennas installed on top of their house that looked like you were trying to catch alien transmissions. But this was by no means a standard. Even still, even long before SPN was a thing, Nielsen and other interested parties took interest in tracking the decline of television, but it /really/ started ramping up around 2009 because of the transition.

But if you didn't have cable? If you weren't a lucky sod or early converter? You had six, maybe eight local stations. WB/CW (2006) was one of them. You generally got Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, WB, CW... and maybe one other rando and a few locals. Welcome to television. So, lo and behold, when people turned on their TV, they only had... 6, 8 choices? Goooo figure. These stations - ALL of them - had MUCH HIGHER RATINGS.

Notice the “today” is a chart that ended in 2011. Now have fun wading through the rest.

Does anyone remember Kripke talking about being in the Bubble and being unsure the show was going to make it until Misha Collins tanked in? This isn't about stanning Misha (I am not nor have I ever been a Misha stan, I am a TPTB stan and ALL related individuals) - this is about explaining just where Kripke's head was at. That's because as the show progressed, it started losing value. We're gonna get to ratings later, but know that CW was not going to syndicate until it reached 88 episodes, and by late season 3... it didn't look like they were going to get there. At a glance, looking at numbers and demos both, it looked like the show... marginally recovered, tada, happy day. But there is a picture far, far deeper than this.

Okay so that’s just news but...

Do you see these charts? These are just... several I whipped up off a quick google search regarding network television. Notice the one showing network shares drops off dead at 2012; and if any of you, whatsoever, realize anything it's that in these last five years, we've had a truly digital boom. Everyone has a cell phone with internet. Everyone has cable, DVR, high speed internet. In the US, at least. It's a very, very, VERY small population that doesn't anymore. As a result And just in case for some reason you're unaware of that, here have a CHART and another CHART. And take notice that Amazon, Hulu, and other major streaming services do NOT report ratings. They make the studio money, yes, and they're very happy and aware of that, but you'll never see it reflect in viewers or demos. But despite this, at least until the 2012 cutoff, seems like CW’s share stayed pretty level, didn’t it? But... where is it going?

Oh, IDK.

Now if for any reason you think this has zero impact or ramifications in ratings across the board on major networks, let's try this: Simpsons. Totally different genres, viewership types, right? Here's a bundle of charts. I even overlapped them within the year brackets for the visually impaired.

You can try it with the time period for anything. Check out WWE. Check out anything out in the US this long. Overlay. Start feeling embarassed. 

QED: Ratings literally everywhere have gone down. And that's what the "Plus" factor in ratings is for.

Okay you keep talking about "Plus" so WTF IS PLUS

Plus isn't exactly what the industry calls it, but it's become a widely acknowledged tag for the general public. "Plus" is a factor that people-that-aren't-dumb-and-work-in-TV are fully aware of and, I promise, with all of those charts in mind, completely expect. It's a lot simpler to just call it Plus.

A18-49+ (or "Plus" for short) is a stab at a "fair" measurement of historical TV ratings in a world where Live + Same Day broadcast ratings and renewal standards are constantly on the decline. To create a fair measurement for entertainment programming, a 30 year ratings buff came up with the rating for the average moment of primetime entertainment programming on the big four broadcasters in each season starting with 2001-02, as "league average."

A18-49+ takes a show's average rating for a season, divides it by the "league average" for that season, and multiplies by 100. That means a show with a 100 A18-49+ did exactly the "league average" for entertainment programming. The bigger, the better.

You can read more from the creator here: http://www.spottedratings.com/p/a18-49-index.html

Keep in mind this individual has no affiliation with SPN or the CW, doesn't give two flying FUCKS about your fandom drama or ships, and has been studying ratings since before most of the squawkers here popped out of their mother. The others, you may have been in school at the time. That said, before you start screaming any of the trivializing "bias" horse shit you can feel free to go argue with that sysop and look like a righteous jackass to them too, or you can deal with the fact that someone, somewhere, is far, far more aware of what they're talking about than you are.

Now that we have that handled,

So... demos don't mean anything?

No, they do. They're an important microcosm in a very vast macrocosm that's eternally expanding. Demos show us our "percent share" of people watching actual television on any given day and time. Even on shitty days where SPN is panning a flat 0.50, that means one in two hundred people with their TVs on in america are watching, basically. It's a little more complicated than that, but this is gonna be long enough.

However, demos can be impacted by just... high TV viewing nights. Let's say a TV show has a highly dedicated cult fandom and then, I dunno, the Olympics click on. Even if that show retains every base line fan, unless it has something like a ratings draw character that rakes in more than their average viewers, the demo is going to faceplant even if they happen to get MORE viewers. Why? Because 5 bazillion new people just tuned into the Olympics that usually wouldn't even watch TV and now our percentiles are fucked up. 

To some extent, those of us that are versed in the mechanics of the TV world can kind of speculate what's going to slag viewership on a given night. 

Holidays, olympics, etc. If you air a TV episode on Christmas when a million people around the US all decide to tune into the fucking hallmark channel to watch a fake fireplace with fake puppies running around, suddenly everything goes to hell. And so on. There's other more detailed nuances than this, of course, but these are the ones that make sense without pages of extra exposition. 

That said, a demo can flux up and down even on the exact same number of viewers. Sometimes, a demo can be below an episode even though it had more viewers. Demo matters more than raw viewers because it shows the general retention better than raw heavy traffic does, since there can just be a lazy damn day in America by some fluke and boom, heavy general click-on. Viewership, in the end, means about as much as a fart in the wind. Demos give us localized views within the structure of a few seasonal periods. Demos of surrounding years can be relatively contiguous, but while hundreds of station options expand, streaming becomes more prevalent and more, the core networks, as seen on the above charts, seem to be dying demographically.

I promise it's not that the Simpsons or WWE have become 1/3 as entertaining as before, and neither has SPN. The simple fact of it is: people have diversified options in what, and how to view. 

So back to base: The Plus factor is a simple algorithm to determine that. Networks take it into account too, that's why they're still making money, and still airing things that, in theory, have 1/2 or 1/3 the ratings they had a handful of years ago. Because in reality: that's simply not true. And anyone that continues to recite this shows they have no idea what they're talking about. Then there's "True," which is ratings adjusted for timeslot and station, as CW has its own formula if you look up "Plus,"

Okay fine but SPN started at a 2.5 demo in season 1 and has a 0.6 demo now and you can't even-

Okay first of all, hold the phone, S1-3 stan, because we've got some enlightenment here.

Literally any new show in that era (due to the limited options thing) got a wealth of attention. Did you know that by midseason demo had already dropped to 1.7 and share had dropped from 6 to 4? It only broke 2.0 one other time that season, dropping as low as 1.3 in the penultimate episode, with the finale marking in at 1.6. Supernatural lost an entire viewership percentile over the course of only its first season, and the average was a 1.9. (Source: http://www.spottedratings.com/2011/12/spotvault-supernatural-cw-2005-06.html )

Season 2 fared no better, starting at 1.7 and never returning to it, declining to 1.2 by the finale with a 29% loss on year to year. However, later on, I'm going to break out the "Plus" metric and show why... this was actually okay. For now, it looks rough on S1-3 stans, but hang in there! Plus will shine for you on this. Just wait until we do raw demo breakdown. Just hang onto the average being 1.38. (Source: http://www.spottedratings.com/2011/12/spotvault-supernatural-cw-2006-07.html )

Supernatural returned in season 3 at 1.2, where it left off, bouncing between and staying... just about stable there. Even on season average (1.2) (Source: http://www.spottedratings.com/2011/12/spotvault-supernatural-cw-2007-08.html )

As I recently went through the skull busting agony of finding "the first episode of March" for all seasons to show a thematic trend, I'm going to give you "first episode of March" (not withstanding S3 which was off until end of April) with Plus values as pulled from this same site. All the way through the end of "Kripke's vision." S1: 3/30/06 37 S2: 3/15/07 37 (+0%) S3: 4/24/08* 30 (-19%) S4: 3/12/09 33 (+10%) S5: 3/25/10 39 (+19%) Literally, arbitrary date/episode number you can go back and cross reference for air times. Go ahead, prove I'm wrong. And if you want, and are willing to give a few days for me to pull up the independent Plus values on all of these seasons (or do so yourself) - go and check. Try to /not/ be so transparent as to lurch for the initial surge wave of S1 that we've already covered the horrific slashing of. This is clearly where we equalized.

So what's up with S2 having the same "Plus" value as S1, when S2 had a drop? Well, check the seasons, the S1 March ep and S2 ep basically got the same viewership on that specific episode, and no major changes happened. Tada! Cool. So what happened in S3? We flatlined.

What was the bottom of S2's barrel on ratings became our average point. Simple enough. Be it demos, audience, or "Plus," S3 kinda waffled - while still in the grey area of syndication that Kripke was worrying about (88 episodes.) So moving into S4, you see the +10 value. Things were /starting/ to update but not wildly at this point. Season started at 1.7, which we hadn't seen in a while, then danced around and landed at an average of 1.3; still a higher demo than S3, but I mean, not staggeringly so.

But here's where those plusses get fun.

As above, in 2009, digital conversion became mandated. You could either buy an expensive converter box to keep watching regular TV, have NO TV, or go to cable. By then, portions of friends had gotten basic cable, most people cracked and went to table, but not all yet. Some still scrabbled for rabbit ears. Even still, on all above graphs and charts, you'll notice the decline setting forward. S5 hit with a starter demo of 1.4, balancing routinely to 1.22, lending it between S 4 and S 2  - so what gives on it being ranked ABOVE both of them? (+19% over S4, +29% over S3, +10% over S1-2)  - BECAUSE EVERYBODY HAD CABLE OR NO TV.

That's right, diversity was almost thrust upon the general audience, but at that point, cable was still a fairly small universe compared to now. Streaming still wasn't a thing. Lo and behold, even though S5's season average was on par between 3 and 5, the value was ranked above - as the true death of broadcast television began... and miraculously, SPN pretty much kept its viewerbase while other stations started dropping like flies in 2009.

---

Still reading? Probably not the people this needs to reach, but it'll educate those that do truly WANT to know.

Ah... season 6. I have so many things to say about season 6-7. First of all I do feel like Sera Gamble was kind of thrown under a bus; S3 had the writer's strike, S4 Manners was pulling out due to DYING, then S5 Kripke and head author Carver both bounced like DEUCES and left Gamble scrambling with a tied off storyline and a now-syndicated show demanding more.

Despite S4-5 pulling out and bearing through the decline of network TV, season 6, in pure demos, didn't do that well. Started at 1.3, ended at 0.8, and on top of that got boned over onto Fridays too. TLDR season average was 0.99. There's a lot of factors in this drop - from some original audience being appeased by Swan Song, the schedule change, and other people just not liking the new production and direction, but the thing is? It still held. It was S7 that fell through the goddamn floor. S1: 3/30/06 37 S2: 3/15/07 37 (+0%) S3: 4/24/08* 30 (-19%) S4: 3/12/09 33 (+10%) S5: 3/25/10 39 (+19%) S6: 3/04/11 39 (+0%) [Moved to Friday] S7: 3/16/12 30 (-24%) So before anybody starts crying about Born Again Identity being the lowest rated as DA PROOF that Cas wasn't wanted back, you need to look at that. LOOK AT IT. That was the episode before he came back, with no warning nor ad at that point indicating he would. S7 fell to an average of 0.73, or in demo talk, about a 26.5% demo loss. Plus rounds off 2.5 of that as standard network losses over that period. But the fact of it, by every demographic, at this point, the last two seasons had lost us HALF of the season 4-5 stable demographic that resisted the digital conversion period. 

There's a reason Gamble doesn't work there anymore.

So let's talk more about demos, and how they're often flagrantly abused in the name of hate. 

Let's look at season 8. Season 8's recovery may have seemed meager. It rode low on the aftermath of S7 and started at only 0.8, but routinely stabilized at 1.0, including the back end of the season, leaving us a 0.92. Here's the Plus value share, S6: 3/04/11 39 (+0%) [Moved to Friday] S7: 3/16/12 30 (-24%) S8: 3/20/13 47 (+58%) S9: 3/04/14 48 (+2%)

You notice anything here? Mainly that they projected a 50% annual incline of data usage back then? You know, people who worked in it? Or how about the one that showed the projections were spot on when the chart was made afterward? How about a report on how many TV networks branched on cable around then? Or defaulting back to those cripplingly flatlining charts? Broadcast TV is dead, Jim. But somehow, despite only recovering to just-under the ratings of S6 (roughly 28%~ recovery demo-wise), it counted as a +58% increase. Again, it's not me, it's them. [points at the 30 year ratings experts] Network TV declined, but SPN bounced back.

As you can see, S9 held the sharing line, but that's also because SPN had updated.

Updated how? Oh, let's see... Supernatural had been loaded for binge watch on Netflix. DVR and SD started popularizing and becoming mainstream. S9 stabilized us back at a 1.0 raw demographic despite these tumultuous changes in television. Back to Plus, S8: 3/20/13 47 (+58%) S9: 3/04/14 48 (+2%) S10: 3/18/15 36 (-33%) S11: 3/23/16 44 (+22%) So here's where it looks like it gets dicey. Season 10 started at a 1.1 share, which we really hadn't seen since... well, Kripke era. It hovered around the 1.0 line until midseason. I also have my feelings about the back-end of S10's handling, and by the sounds of interviews and panels, so did the cast and crew, but someone pitched a direction, we meandered, ratings drifted.  0.1>0.9>0.8>0.7>0.6. Even the finale didn't bank better than 0.7, and our average dropped at 0.8. Fun fact though, that -33% on the first episode of March? One of the lowest rated episodes on the season, notwithstanding the horrible choice of killing off Charlie. But by then, viewership had floundered. Even still, at our LOWEST episodes on the season, we're holding the network share ABOVE the S9 gains... as once again digital around us booms.

Don't believe me? Check. You can forward and backtrack everything I'm saying on these seasons. (Source: http://www.spottedratings.com/2014/10/spotvault-supernatural-cw-2014-15.html )

Curiously after midseason, on the bottom chart, you can literally SEE the perpetual decline on every metric. You can LITERALLY look at it as it started dropping viewers to competition.

Ultimately, S11 led in about where you'd expect, a small tick above S10's ending, because... premieres. Duh. 0.9. TLDR ratings at a glance teeter tottered around 0.71 on demographic. Our demo went down 0.1 ... but our Plus went up 22%? And better, our Plus went up 22% on one of the LOWEST RATED episodes OF season 11? And the better part of the extended charts (http://www.spottedratings.com/2015/10/spotvault-supernatural-cw-2015-16.html) are green instead of red?!?! What black magic is this?

The black magic is called being in the year 2016. How many of your US friends didn't have highspeed internet? How accessible was CW app which wasn't connecting in yet? How many people buy from Amazon, Hulu, or other streaming sources that don't report ratings but just feed in direct profits?

DING DING DING, EUREKA. Maybe this has clicked on a light in a few skulls. We'll touch briefly on S12-13. 

Look, I'm not a S12 fan. I fucking hated S12. But I have the brains enough to know that this 0.6 it has? The population doesn't. There's a reason TPTB is holding on and it's not ThE DeStIEL aGENdaaaaa. It's not SaMEraSUre. So let's talk. S12. Led in at 0.8 from S11, hit .6 pretty immediately spare for like 12x12 and a few other flukes, rode the perfect 0.6 average line. But where is our Plus? S11: 3/23/16 44 (+22%) S12: 3/02/17 49 (+11%)

That's right. Despite our average going down 0.1 at a glance to people who don't understand how The Internet works, our Plus values increased 11%. Because guess what? IT WAS 2017 AND EVERYTHING IS FREAKING DIGITAL. So how about we do the time warp to the current, and realize we're in 2018, and not back in 2005-land where cell phones were mythic ideas that you were excited if you could play 2-tone space invaders on.

Those were first eps of March, right? Enjoy the first week of March, this year (13x14) (http://www.spottedratings.com/2018/03/spotted-ratings-thursday-3118.html#more)

See the buttons for Raw and Plus? 

First of all let me disclaimer this. At the point I'm writing this piece, true-true finals haven't been tallied in and the main page for it hasn't been made in archive yet with true finals. These are prelims. I'm writing this before TVSF or any of the big websites people like to bounce to as casuals thinking they're ITK about ratings go to look at, release anything. Both this page and TVSF say 0.6 at this point. I can promise the final is going to be (or be close to, such as within a 0.01~) 0.56; Why? Because this same site also releases unrounded prelims, and both this page, TVSF, and almost any page does a round-up. Unrounded prelims were 0.558. We got 0.56.(Adjustments can and do happen but, at the point of this post, we’re not getting railed by a lot of pre-emptions and prelims have generally been within 0.01; the specific accuracy of fast track national unrounded prelims can vary such as with a large pre-empt.)

But do yourself a favor. Check the Plus. Season 13: 3/1/2018 - episode 13x14 - 56. A 14% increase in network share at current and, even if this drops a few points with a 0.56 adjustment, no doubt at least a 10% increase. So let's do some math: S1: 3/30/06 37 S2: 3/15/07 37 (+0%) S3: 4/24/08* 30 (-19%) S4: 3/12/09 33 (+10%) S5: 3/25/10 39 (+19%) S6: 3/04/11 39 (+0%) [Moved to Friday] S7: 3/16/12 30 (-24%) S8: 3/20/13 47 (+58%) S9: 3/04/14 48 (+2%) S10: 3/18/15 36 (-33%) (earlier episodes would give us nearer to -20% but we're being nice to antis.) S11: 3/23/16 44 (+22%) S12: 3/02/17 49 (+11%) S13: 3/01/18 56 (+14%) You... you do realize that in terms of broadcast television, this means that S13 is performing, functionally, 51% better than S1-2 did at origin and as much as 86% better than season 3?

You... you do realize that, right?

So while someone sits here, screaming, "WHY HAVEN'T TPTB LISTENED TO US?" maybe stop and realize that it is because you are WRONG to the point of being utterly incoherent to anyone that knows how this works. The seasons railed for are the lowest performance, the attempt to go back TOWARDS those demands in early S7 threw the show BACK into that early trashcan, and all steps made by the eras that a certain very small, noisy sect of haters screech about have in fact redeemed the show, first in regaining MASSIVELY exodused demo, then stabilizing it across other mediums and still climbing compared to all competition.

Now I will rub SOME salt in the wound. Tombstone. You know that one that all the haters rioted, hashtagged a #mysupernatural boycott during to prove they weren't watching, ended up having a GIANT ratings jack?

Yeah. Its Plus value was 69. Or, summarily, sizably above two times the network value of early seasons. And had a 20% increase over Year to Year in the same slot. And a 40% increase on "true year to year" from even S12.(http://www.spottedratings.com/2017/11/spotted-ratings-thursday-111617.html) Don't believe me? Ask the dishes. Click plus.

The simple fact of it is: the people that scream the show is "dying" are wrong in every field imaginable. The show is, and will continue to be, one of CW's forever strong horses as long as J2 WANT. But the fact of it is - they don't want it as much anymore.

Not because of "Jared mistreatment" by the crew; but because this is now 13 years in which the world around them has changed - quite literally - right down to the evolution of cellphones as we've spoken - while they've started families. And maybe, just maybe, some of them are tired of their friends and family being harangued in the name of tinhatting or hating certain characters. And maybe, just maybe, they're heading on 40 and want to try other things in life. And maybe, just maybe, we should respect that instead of turning it into other reasons to shriek at people and just prove the point. Cuz the entire ratings screaming? That's gone. It's done.

----

Now this is already a titanic post. I'm not going to cover my own ratings projections mechanics in the same thing. I've talked it in bits and pieces over social media, but really mapping out the entire image of it, and its reliance on a mix of outter-world issues, episodical formats, calendar scheduling, hiatuses, and of course fan favorites and ratings characters yes - that's it's own thing. So to those who have been worried - CW will literally continue it, "as long as ratings hold out." One thing that hasn't occured to the shriekers is that this has been the verse since the dawn of time. Even with demos seeming to fraction on themselves until you run this kind of analysis. Why is that? Because ratings have been holding out. They always have. CW will never have another horse in the race like Supernatural. Flash is close - it tries, but it's not as age and time worn and we have no proof, beyond it surviving another decade, that it will hold out like SPN has. If it does, Good On It. But CW really only has two considerations: J2(and to some extent M)'s desires, and any well-beyond-SPN fiscal issues (such as the TW/ATT fiasco that could bone a lot of their projects). That's it. SPN is fine. SPN is fantastic. SPN is more than 50% better off than when it started.

Again, at some point I'll break down the mechanics I use to generate my demo projections at another point. Those that pay attention know I'm eerily accurate; and these things go beyond simply "who is in the episode," though that be part of it - there's so many complicated things that I'd have to explain piece by piece. So, some day, I'll get to that. Until then, you see I know what I'm talking about and see that I'm right week in-and-out, so...

TLDR to people yelling about ratings to bash people: Shut the fuck up about ratings until you understand it. Or quietly squii over when something looks good. But don't sit here trying to use it to bludgeon other wings down or worse, harass TPTB or try to agenda push on them when one specific bracket of ratings seem to look good to your cause, because odds are, you look like a giant freaking asshat.

TLDR2 for people who love the show in its current state: S13 is doing 51% better than S1-2 and Tombstone did 2times+ better respectively and you should be really happy about that. (Edit: Brainfried, it was a late post I was finishing. S13 is doing 86% better than S3, Tombstone did  2x better than all of them. Crossed my wires at 2 AM.)

This has been a public service announcement AND The More You Know.

(Edit: For those still finding this fresh, an addendum post has been created:

https://intelligentshipper.tumblr.com/post/171566934275/ratings-for-dummies-vol-2 )