Board Thread:False Info and Speculative Discussion/@comment-24732895-20140910035928/@comment-19765459-20140910181441

Don't be arrogant and self-righteous in assuming that people are just "haters" because they criticize decline in show quality. Probably the biggest example of that ever was the enormous Star Trek fandom, many of whose fans had been positively passionate about the franchise. But many began to decamp in the face of perceived poor writing on Voyager and Enterprise. In some cases these were people whose love of the franchise stretched all the way back to the 60's!

Yet still, sometimes even die-hard, decades-long fans reach a breaking point.

As I have said in the past, I used to await each new episode of Teen Wolf eagerly. But with what I feel is the declining quality of the writing (massive plot holes, logical fallacies, characters whose actions are clearly driven by plot rather than personality, etc....) I have become a sporadic internet viewer. So have a lot of others.

This is bad no matter how you spin it. Because younger viewers who are not senior citizens scared of their computers will find ways to ignore commercials, and advertising pays the bills for the show to exist at all. An unreliable, internet-centric audience is not a good market, product placement within the show notwithstanding (Anyone want an Icebreaker? They're really good for fixing dog breath). Viacom is perfectly aware of how many follow-up viewers they get on mtv.com, Hulu, etc...so those viewers are not invisible. Saying that networks "don't know" how to accurately rate shows in the internet age is a fallacy and an excuse used by people who are in denial about loss of viewership.