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7 Questions with ION Television

Interview? From reading the article, I got the sense that Sitcoms Online sent seven questions to the ION rep, and she sent back seven pat answers. Having read the article, I know exactly as much about ION now that I knew before: not much.
 
It looks like ER has been pretty weak so far for Ion. In the top 20 markets on Tuesday, ER only got above a 1 rating in one market, Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto.

However, NCIS has been a hit for Ion. In NYC NCIS got a 1.6, Dallas 1.4, Atlanta 0.9, Detroit 1.2, Phoenix 1.6, Minneapolis 1.1, Cleavland 1.7, Denver 1.9, Orlando 1.0, and Sacramento 1.2.

If Ion could pair NCIS with two more hit shows the network would be in great shape.
 
DStroyer said:
And not one mention of when/if they're going HD.

Given that the typical Ion DTV station carries four programming streams, (Ion, qubo, Ion Life and Worship) is there any room for HD?
 
dhett said:
Given that the typical Ion DTV station carries four programming streams, (Ion, qubo, Ion Life and Worship) is there any room for HD?

They've already compressed down the subchannels such that I think an HD feed, while not pristine, won't look completely like crap. They've said they're going to do 720p, which can look pretty good at 14 Mbps from what I've seen. They've got the stat muxer doing all kinds of work at the moment, but I've seen the three extra subs take up just 5Mbps at their smallest, which leaves roughly 13 Mbps for HD. Not too bad.

The other thing is that they've managed to do little things to shrink the subs already. The video on Worship is only 528x480i, the audio on qubo and IONLife is reduced to 128kbps. Not huge differences, but every little bit counts.

- Trip
 
If I'm not mistaken, isn't Worship just a teletext-like service with biblical quotes set to music? If that's the case, there's some easy bandwidth to free up for HD programming. Not that I have anything against biblical quotes whatsoever, it's just too easy to find the same thing on the Internet or in the Bible itself.
 
M.J. said:
If I'm not mistaken, isn't Worship just a teletext-like service with biblical quotes set to music? If that's the case, there's some easy bandwidth to free up for HD programming. Not that I have anything against biblical quotes whatsoever, it's just too easy to find the same thing on the Internet or in the Bible itself.

It's like that sometimes, though I've seen actual programming on the channel before. I don't have it programmed into any of my receivers, but I did catch one time where they had an infomercial sort of thing for some clean comedian that's kinda funny until he drags religion into it. (IMO)

- Trip
 
dhett said:
Interview? From reading the article, I got the sense that Sitcoms Online sent seven questions to the ION rep, and she sent back seven pat answers. Having read the article, I know exactly as much about ION now that I knew before: not much.

I got the same feeling too.

I used to really enjoy Sitcomsonline but in recent years the guy who runs that site ( TJ ) has gotten into this "anti-gossip" kick. I know a few years back Sitcomsonline had banned a few posters who mentioned in their posts that Dana Plato from Diff'Rent Strokes had done porn before her death and the "rumor" ( which turned out out be true BTW ) that the late Nell Carter from Gimmie A Break was bisexual and had a female lover at the time of her death.

Imagine what would happened if the people who run this site would "ban rumors" ???

This site wouldn't exist :) !!!!!!!!
 
stationi said:
It looks like ER has been pretty weak so far for Ion. In the top 20 markets on Tuesday, ER only got above a 1 rating in one market, Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto.

However, NCIS has been a hit for Ion. In NYC NCIS got a 1.6, Dallas 1.4, Atlanta 0.9, Detroit 1.2, Phoenix 1.6, Minneapolis 1.1, Cleavland 1.7, Denver 1.9, Orlando 1.0, and Sacramento 1.2.

Prior to this month, how often had Ion broken a 1.0 rating in any market? It may be that even ER's ratings represent an improvement over what they had been getting...

Just out of curiosity...any chance of posting a link to where those ratings that you posted can be found? (I suspect they probably aren't online, but it never hurts to ask)
 
TexasTom said:
stationi said:
It looks like ER has been pretty weak so far for Ion. In the top 20 markets on Tuesday, ER only got above a 1 rating in one market, Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto.

However, NCIS has been a hit for Ion. In NYC NCIS got a 1.6, Dallas 1.4, Atlanta 0.9, Detroit 1.2, Phoenix 1.6, Minneapolis 1.1, Cleavland 1.7, Denver 1.9, Orlando 1.0, and Sacramento 1.2.

Prior to this month, how often had Ion broken a 1.0 rating in any market? It may be that even ER's ratings represent an improvement over what they had been getting...

Just out of curiosity...any chance of posting a link to where those ratings that you posted can be found? (I suspect they probably aren't online, but it never hurts to ask)


The numbers I quoted from are here near the middle...

http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/63310451/m/305102951/p/3
 
stationi said:
It looks like ER has been pretty weak so far for Ion. In the top 20 markets on Tuesday, ER only got above a 1 rating in one market, Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto.

However, NCIS has been a hit for Ion. In NYC NCIS got a 1.6, Dallas 1.4, Atlanta 0.9, Detroit 1.2, Phoenix 1.6, Minneapolis 1.1, Cleavland 1.7, Denver 1.9, Orlando 1.0, and Sacramento 1.2.

If Ion could pair NCIS with two more hit shows the network would be in great shape.

I think The reason ER is so weak for ION is its overexposure..Final new season on NBC, at least 10 episodes a week (maybe 15 if they still run it at 7PM weeknights) on TNT, not to mention local syndication..(though it might not be in local syndication any longer)
 
TexasTom said:
Prior to this month, how often had Ion broken a 1.0 rating in any market? It may be that even ER's ratings represent an improvement over what they had been getting...

I don't have all the historic numbers here, but here, WVPX/23 has generally hung out at or near 1.0...even going back to its days as Akron-based ABC affliate WAKC, aiming at the lower half of the market.
 
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