Television Audiences

The human race seems to be falling for the space aliens' devious scheme: We're watching more television than ever, according to a report released Monday. If you've seen that Hulu.com commercial starring Alec Baldwin, you know that TV is a plot devised by aliens to turn our brains into mush so they can scoop them out and eat them. Computers, the ad says, are making our brains even mushier by giving us more places to watch TV. The Nielsen Co.'

Fears of blank TV screens and pixelated shows largely failed to materialize in San Diego on Wednesday as months of public outreach left the vast majority of viewers capable of receiving pictures via the new all-digital broadcasts. Although Congress delayed the digital TV transition until June 12 for most of the country, San Diego's major broadcast stations were among hundreds nationwide that received federal permission to turn off their analog signals early.

WHEN NBC's Golden Globes telecast devolved into a fiasco earlier this month, with ratings skidding more than 70%, it seemed to hammer home the conventional wisdom about the writers strike. The strike by the Writers Guild of America, you'll recall, was supposed to be a disaster for TV ratings. Once they realized their favorite shows were no longer airing original episodes, angry and bereft viewers would go berserk, smash their flat-screens and spend all their newfound free time on Facebook.com.

As recently as a week ago, a ratings gold medal for coverage of the Beijing Olympics might have looked beyond NBC's grasp. The average U.S. household has more than 100 channels from which to choose, and Games held in foreign countries -- as seen in Greece in 2004 or Australia in 2000 -- just don't tend to grab the attention of Americans like Olympics held closer to home. What's more, the yawning time difference between China and the U.S. makes it difficult to air big events live.

It is a season of egos, high-priced commercials, historical epics, strange comedies and prickly off-camera dramas involving Iranian makeup artists, Syrian directors and Egyptian movie stars. Ramadan may be a month of prayer, fasting and virtue in the Muslim world, but it is a less than holy time on TV.

It's 10 p.m., and the networks don't know where their viewers are. For decades, the late-evening time slot was one of the prime spots for top network shows, from '70s cop dramas like "Starsky and Hutch" to '80s-era soaps such as "Dynasty" and right through more recent hits like "ER" and "Law & Order." But now the bottom is falling out of ratings for that time slot -- and one of the prime culprits is the DVR.

Charlie Crews is a patient man. But how much longer is this Zen-striving Los Angeles police detective supposed to wait for TV viewers to discover that they can't live without his quick wit, astute observations or sparkling red hair? Even a man seeking to have no worldly attachments would find it difficult to ignore the sophomore slump that afflicts not only his show, NBC's critically acclaimed "Life," but all prime-time television this season as well.

The U.S. is a nation of even bigger couch potatoes than previously realized. Nielsen Co. left little doubt Monday when it reported that television use is at an all-time high in the U.S., with home TVs turned on for an average of 8 hours, 18 minutes a day. A decade ago, American households watched an average of 7 hours, 15 minutes a day. Television continued to be the screen of choice despite increasing competition from computers.

It had the makings of reality-television gold. The third season of "Wall Street Warriors" started filming this spring, as the financial sector's meltdown accelerated. The show's camera crews captured the pain and anger of the biggest stock market crash in decades. But right now, the show doesn't have an audience. "Wall Street Warriors" was shot for Mojo HD, a high-definition cable channel that's shutting down Monday, leaving the reality series without a home.