I subscribe to a few Usenet groups and it does seem to be slowing down lately. Although the activity in the groups I subscribe to is decent, most of the groups offered are effectively dead.

I was looking at the numbers on Google groups, which lists Usenet groups amongst others with statistics, and a few interesting this emerged. Note through that since I'm using Google groups for stats, some of the groups listed aren't Usenet groups and would affect the results, but I expect the results should be similar. It's sort of like using the statistics for overall fruit sales to show the sales of apples. The problem is that I couldn't find stats for just the Usenet alone.

1. The most popular group is news.admin.net-abuse.sightings with 5584 subscribers and 24,150 messages in the past month.

2. Google lists over 4 million groups, or (according to my calculations) precisely 4,196,088.

3. Over 4 million, or 4,002,393 groups received no messages in the past month, effectively making them "dead" groups. 209,038 groups have absolutely no members, while 3,595,378 have less than 10 members. Note that a "member" is likely anyone who ever posted to that group, so someone who only posted a single message could be classified as a member.

4. Many groups are mistakes or variations on the same title as other groups, such as bainaries instead of binaries. This accounts for many of the dead groups.

5. From the numbers it appears that 193,695 out of 4,196,088 groups, or about 4.6% of the groups have any activity at all. over 95% of the groups are dead. 15,282 (about 8% of the "active" groups or less than .4% overall) get at least 100 messages per month, or roughly 3 per day, and could be considered active. Those active groups getting less than that are marginal and could go either way. 

6. Of the 13 highest activity groups, many appear to be auto-posters and restricted groups. 3 have only 1 member while 1 has only 4 members. One of them is for the Dow Jones.

7. A surprising number of the most active groups are foreign language groups. However, alt.tv.american-idol is amongst one of the 14 most active with 1,231 members and 14,282 messages per month.

8. About 60,000 (59,930) have been posted to in the last day. About 158,000 have been posted to in the last 10 days.

9. Comparing Google groups for rec.arts.tv: Google groups stated 3,122 subscribers although I counted less than 100 posters for the past day. This discrepancy is partially due to posts not getting through and that fact that I'm comparing one day's activity to one month's, although the same people tend to post so over 3,000 is too big a discrepancy. This is most likely the result of Spammers who are filtered out. As a result, most of these numbers are inaccurate.

Although these are stats for Google groups and not the Usenet specifically, one thing seems clear. The problem is not that the Usenet is dying, as much as it's just not getting rid of it's garbage. The Usenet is alive, but in pieces. It needs to get rid of those groups which are no longer active. 95% of the Usenet is dead, but the rest is alive and active.

Many news-servers do try to clean off dead groups since they only serve to slow the system down. As such, when one tries to get a listing of newsgroups they'll often see only the actual active groups. So a newsserver might list only 10,000 groups. One I use has about 30,000 groups. But not all are active.

Referring to the Usenet is like referring to the Internet. It's a collection of things, not one specific thing. Individual groups may die but the Usenet continues. However, overall Usenet activity is something that can be measured. If the News Admin group is the most popular Usenet group, then we know there's at least 5,500 people using the Usenet. The problem is that there's no clear number as to how many use the Usenet overall. It could be 10,000 or it could be 100,000, if not higher.

But when we look at it from an ISPs point-of-view, even 100,000 may not be all that much. There are millions of people using the Internet, so it's possible that an ISP may be running a server for only a small fraction of it's users. A newsgroups that gets 100 posts a day may be getting them from 50 to 100 different servers.

Based upon the net-admin group, let's say there's 5,000 servers and 100,000 users. That's 20 users per server. Even a popular system like AOL may have only 1,000 Usenet users and 1,000,000 Internet subscribers. So why support a system for only .1% of your users?

For an ISP that may have only 100,000 subscribers, that .1% would work out to only 100 customers. Chances are they aren't going to drop your service, and even if they do it may not make much difference. Out of the 100 they might loose only 2 or 3. And it's more likely that the customer will stay with the service and find another Usenet server.

Supporting a Usenet server might cost the ISP $100/month but if they're only making $20/month per customer they could afford to loose a few. And if you're talking net profits, the ISP might be making only $2 net, so even loosing nearly half those customers would leave the ISP better off. And for and ISP with only 10,000 customers, they're better not having a server than having one for only a few people. Even loosing 5 customers at $20/month would mean that they break even.

The Usenet will not die from lack of popularity alone. While individual groups may rise and fall, the Usenet as a whole continues to adapt. The problem is that those running servers are often shutting them down because it's no longer financially reasonable.

And since the advent of the Usenet, forums have appeared. Those are the greatest competition to the Usenet. New users aren't bothering with the Usenet anymore, they're using forums instead.

I expect there will always be those that offer Usenet service as long as it's financially reasonable, and there will always be those that wish to use the Usenet. There will also be groups such as rec.arts.tv which are likely to never die since they deal with constantly popular topics. The problem is whether these people will have the Usenet access. Those who don't know where to look for free usenet access after loosing their servers are unlikely to subscribe, thus furthering the diminishing activity. And even free servers don't last forever; one often finds themselves switching servers each year or two.

So in summary, the Usenet is not dead, although it's under constant attack. There are those who will continue to use it as long as they can, but it doesn't seem to be drawing in many new users. Groups do die, but the end of a newsgroup doesn't mean the end of the Usenet. Still, with service being shut down and forums drawing away potential new Usenet users, it's hard to say if the Usenet will still be around in ten years.

If the Usenet dies, it will be with a whimper unheard by most.

(For those listening on the Odiogo podcast feed you might want to just read this post on the website instead. I don't know how it will play.)

Now that that the networks have released their fall schedules (http://www.thefutoncritic.com/guide.aspx?id=fall_2009), I can now make some tentative plans on what I'll watch in the fall. These are tentative because it will all depend upon any changes the networks make in their programming. It's also dependant upon what new shows catch my interest.

I'm just listing the prime-time shows. I'm so use to watching The Tonight Show at 11:35pm, but after watching Leno at 10pm--which I might tape and watch after 11pm--I don't know if I'll want to bother with Conan.

Monday

Since I've decided to drop Heroes I'll probably skip it this year, however I will watch Chuck when it returns. I'll also check out Trauma, but I'm not going to stick with it if it's just another ER. With the possible exception of Bones, which is more a crime drama, I've had my fill of medical dramas for a while. At ten I'll watch Leno.

Tuesday

I started watching JAG part way through the first season and I watched it until it finished. That got me into NCIS and I'll probably watch it and it's spinoff series from 8pm until 10pm. Since none of the new shows at 10pm interest me, I'll likely watch Leno at 10pm.

Wednesday

Nothing at 8pm or 9pm interest me, although I am interested in Human Target when it starts after Christmas. I'm also curious about Eastwick which airs at 10pm. If I like it then I'll watch that, otherwise I'll just watch Leno.

Thursday

As I've said before, I'm a fan of Bones and it seems that I'll have it for another two years at least. So that's what I'll be watching at 8pm. I've generally lost interest in Supernatural, although I would like to check out the season premiere to see where they plan to take the season. However Fringe is also on at that time. While both shows are marginal for me, I have been warming more to Fringe. It seems my decision to pick it over Eleventh Hour was the right one. I also like The Mentalist so I'll most likely watch that at 10pm. There is some chance of taping other shows. This appears to be the busiest night for me.

Friday

This really, really, really is suppose to be the last season of Smallville. And aside from Leno it's about the only thing on that night of any interest to me. But lately I've been watching a lot of recorded stuff on Fridays so I'll just tape Smallville and watch it sometime over the weekend. If I'm not feeling up to watching anything recorded at 10pm I'll watch Leno.

Neither Saturday nor Sunday holds any shows of interest to me, so I'll be watching recording those evenings if I'm not busy with something else.

Of course this schedule is really about shows I'd like to catch and since I record almost all the shows I watch, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'll be watching them at those times.

Excluding Leno, which I don't have to watch and will most likely just watch when it's convenient, I'm looking at about five to nine shows. This is a comfortable level and about half of what I was watching this past year. I've also got a lot of stuff recorded to catch up on, so I don't mind the spare time. Although there could be as many as four or five hours of Leno on top of that. Still, I have a feeling it could seem sparse after this past year and the desert of summer broadcasting.

My Toystore: http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com

Lately there's been a major crackdown by the movie companies to control the distribution of torrents of their material on the Internet by either shutting down or forcing the portals listing torrents to implement restrictions. These restrictions, while not very popular with those downloading, are necessary to control video piracy.

Right now one of the main ways video pirates get the material is to download it. Although it might have some effect on theatrical sales, it's really the DVD sales that concern the distributors. When one goes to buy a DVD on-line they may often wind up with a cheap pirated version made from a downloaded torrent. This results in a significant loss to the industry and a disappointment to the customer.

But television torrents work a little differently. These will often appear after the program has already aired in a country. So for many the torrent then becomes like a virtual VCR, allowing one to watch a show they may have missed the night before.

However, a problem occurs when a show is downloaded in a country it has not yet aired in. Then people are bypassing stations to get access to shows they may have to wait years to see—if at all. Of course one could argue that they could wait, and many do, but if one waits and the show doesn't appear, they may never get to see that show.

There has long been a belief in North America, at least the US and Canada, that television should be free. It is not the viewers that pay for TV but the advertisers. In exchange for putting up with ads, viewers get free TV.

Although the TV that people get isn't necessarily free. To truly get free TV one would have to receive all their TV via off-air broadcasts. When one pays for cable, satellite or some other system they're paying for their TV.

While paying some fee for easy access is reasonable, exactly how much should one really expect to pay for? Cable specialty channels are suppose to sustain themselves from customer subscriptions, yet they run ads. So in effect, the customer is paying twice; once for the subscription and once in having to watch ads.

Furthermore, these specialty channels are suppose to offer something more than what network or basic channels offer, yet very often that may be only one or two decent shows. In the past many of these shows would have aired on network television or at least been syndicated. But now the viewer is expected to pay for an entire channel just to get one show. Multiply this by forty or fifty channels, each with their own shows, and it's not long before one is paying for over a hundred dollars just to get the shows they want—and watching those shows filled with ads.

In such an environment it's understandable why many would turn to the Internet to get their TV. The television industry is likely try to counter this by doing as the movie industry does and eliminating torrents. But there is a better possibility.

Instead of trying to eliminate the distribution of their shows in the Internet, they should be trying to provide legal means of distribution. And many already are. Unfortunately, the system they use often does not allow for access by those outside the country of origin. This is a major problem with the show may be aired about the same time in more than one country. This is an extremely common problem with American shows being broadcast through American sites which don't allow access to Canada, even though those US stations are legally accessible in Canada.

The typical means of distribution used for television networks is some form of video streaming. These sites often provide lower quality content with sometimes awkward players. They don't allow one to really enjoy the show the same way it would appear on TV. As such, while many do use them and wish to support a legal system, they aren't sufficient to eliminate the torrent problem.

What broadcasters need to do is to provide legal torrents of their material for free. But unlike the illegal television torrents right now, they don't need to provide them commercial free. By providing torrents of their shows with ads included, they can provide the show the way many wish to see it while still making money from the ads.

Granted, there's many who have been spoiled by the ad free illegal shows, downloaders would likely be willing to accept the ads if it meant they could get the show without breaking the law. Depending upon the player, it would be possible to fast forward through the ads, but as long as the ad breaks were kept short—say one minute long—many would just as easily watch the ads than to bother skipping through them.

Of course this wouldn't eliminate the television broadcasts for the simple reason that the television and the Internet reach different markets. If anything it would help the show to reach a larger audience. And as long as there's a legal torrent available, there's less chances of illegal ones being offered. In the future we could even see some shows being provided via Internet only.

Torrenting is a cheap way to distribute material. Broadcasting use to be a cheap way to get material. Merging the two only seems natural. But it's not something that producers can ignore. If they don't provide legal material for torrenting, someone else will.

Patrick J. McNamara's Webstore is at http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com

With the networks about to announce their new fall shows, this is a good time to look back on what shows had less than successful runs. Although there's many ways a TV show can be considered a failure, I've decided to group them into three categories.

Failure to Air

It can be difficult to name shows that fall into this category since the vast majority of those shows are never heard about. This failure can cover anything from never making it past the first script--or even the initial concept--to a complete pilot being filmed but never being shown. And in a few cases the show may be included as part of the network's fall promotions even though it winds up never airing.

Although in most cases, if a pilot is made it usually gets aired one way or another, often as a TV movie or special.  It's common to see many of these failures work their way onto summer TV. A few even wound up in circulation as movies that appear on TV once and a while. And in some cases, a show that is initially passed on the first time around may be picked up a year or two later as some shows did this past year.

There's a couple of TV specials that talk about failed pilots made a few years ago: The Best TV Shows That Never Were and it's follow-up, The Greatest TV Shows You Never Saw (And Some You Have). Both do a great job of showcasing these failures and can be nostalgic for those who did see many of the failed pilots. It's hard to believe that some of these shows were ever given serious attention.

Failure to Complete a Season

This is the sort of failed TV series that most think of. About the most notable are the two Bronson Pinchot failures, The Trouble With Larry which lasted only about three episodes and Meego which lasted only one. In both years they managed to be the first shows of the season to be cancelled. And as far as I know no other actor has managed to achieve that status, at least for shows in which they were the lead character. Needless to say, although he's appeared on TV, he's never been the star of any TV series since.

While the season length has been growing shorter, for prime-time TV it's usually considered to be at least 20 episodes. So that leaves a large range of shows which would fall into that category. The ones people tend to remember best are the ones that might disappear after about six to thirteen episodes since those get the attention and because they tend to get cancelled while fans are in the middle of the season.

Failure to Get Renewed

Of all the shows that are considered failures, a large number are those that don't make it to second season. These shows don't always get much attention since most have forgotten about them by the time the fall rolls around, and if they do get cancelled after their first season the announcement usually comes just as the season is wrapping up so fans don't feel as cheated.

Because of the writer's strike last year, many shows that wouldn't have been renewed were. However, as in the case of Pushing Daisies, in many cases it only allowed them to complete a season's worth of material. As such this past year isn't really typical.

Whether these shows are successes or failures really depends upon whether they managed to complete the story well enough. For example, Even though the US version of Life on Mars only ran 17 episodes, it did have a satisfactory conclusion and could be thought of more as a mini-series. More typical would be the recent Knight Rider series which ended in a way that could permit a second season but could also be treated as a series finale.

But unlike in the past, the failure of any TV series doesn't mean it will never be seen again. With DVDs now a common release platform for TV shows, even a series only 6 episodes long could get a DVD release.

And the normal length for a TV show does seem to be shrinking so that many shows are getting only 13 episode orders rather than full season orders. This isn't that unusual, since the normal pattern is for networks to order the pilot, then 5 more episodes (making 6), then 5 more episodes (making 13 in total) and finally ordering 7 or more to make a full season.

There are a number of shows that should not be considered failures, even if they did get cancelled in the middle of a second or third season. The original Star Trek did have enough episodes to air in syndication and is now considered a success, even though it was cancelled in or after it's third year. And most shows that make it past their first year tend to survive a few years. So, with the possible exception of this past couple years (since shows that only had about 9 episodes last year were renewed), anything surviving it's first year should be considered a success.

There are many viewers who may disagree with me, but I thought the ending to the US version of Life on Mars was great. Of course to understand why it was so good you had to pay attention while watching the series. There were many things that appeared throughout the series that just didn't make sense, that is until the ending. But after seeing the ending it all ties together with no loose ends.

There are two ways the series could never have ended. One would have been for him to wake from a coma, as he did in the British version, since that would be how everybody expected the series to end. And that ending is also pro-suicide--something that ABC would never have agreed to air. Besides, if the US version just copied the UK version, people would complain about how the UK version was more original.

The other way in which the series could not have ended would have been for him to stay in the past. He was supposedly from 2008 so he had to return there. While he may have wanted to stay in 1973, he couldn't because he wasn't in control of his life. And trying to pass off his comprehension of modern day wouldn't work if he came from 1973. Just compare the sci-fi of the 70s with the technology of today. Nobody could get it all right.

However, the US version manages to explain all the weird stuff that happened to him. Yes, it was a dream but we have been constantly told that throughout the show. (I'm bolding this because it's important.) And it may have been thought up at the last minute, but it's rare for the ending of any story to be thought up until it's reached. This holds particularly true for TV. While we always knew the people on Battlestar Galactica would find Earth, it turned out to be a different planet than the one they were looking for.

I've seen many people post about how they hated the ending, yet they give absolutely no explanation as to how they would end the series and still cover all the loose ends. The robots. The "tripping" and distortions of reality. Even the appearance of a mentor who was supposedly dead. All were images programmed by the computer and affected by computer glitches. And the title of the show, "Life On Mars," is explained by the ending. (Although it's really "Life In Suspended Animation While On A Journey To Mars" but it's still better than the explanation of MARS by the UK show.)

One could even compare the US version to Total Recall, except we never got to see the start of Sam's journey. In Total Recall the story starts before the "dream" and ends just at what would be the waking point. But in Life On Mars the story starts with the dream and ends just after waking. We were basically told it was a dream from the start and all throughout the show, but were mislead as to what the dream was. Interestingly, it would have been much harder to pull off this ending had they used the original US pilot since that established it as a coma.

One of the best TV show ending was the end of "Newhart" which basically made out the entire series as a dream of a character in another series. Yet one of the worst TV show endings was St. Elsewhere which tried to explain the series away as a dream. In the case of Newhart, it worked because it was unexpected and a little rediculous. Newhart was a comedy, so it was making fun of itself. St. Elsewhere simply tried to use it as a way to bring a popular character back to life. It was a drama and there was nothing to establish it as having been a dream. And there were things that happened in the show which could not be explained away as a dream.

Life On Mars had to end with a waking scene because we had been told he was in a dream. I just can't say this enough. He could have woke from a coma but everyone would have predicted that and it wouldn't have made for an original ending. He could have woke in his bed, but that wouldn't have explained the traffic accident. Waking in space, however, was something nobody would have saw coming.

It was science fantasy (sometimes seeming more like sci-fi and at other times more like fantasy). Giving it a sci-fi ending was perfectly appropriate. Giving it an ending nobody saw coming but which fit into the story perfectly well was brilliant.

This television season has been one of the least watchable seasons ever. Yet I find myself watching more this year than most. Now we're into the final stretch and it couldn't be more welcome.

I'm still finding my schedule crowded, although it's a little more manageable. My most crowded night is Tuesdays with at least four shows I want to watch. But I'll take them in order.

Mondays I'm watching, or at least taping, Heroes followed by Chuck. Neither has been very interesting, although I find Chuck a little more interesting. It's about the only hour-long comedy on TV this year. However, there's rumour that both shows will not be renewed and the ratings support that.

Tuesdays I've been dealing with NCIS, The Mentalist, Fringe, Homeland Security and now Reaper. Homeland Security has been dropped by the network in favour of Dancing With The Stars. There's about five episodes unaired and I suspect they could re-appear during the summer. And since I've been able to catch The Mentalist on Sundays on a Canadian channel and Fringe is currently on hiatus, it's not too bad right now.

With Knight Rider gone, the only show I'm watching on Wednesday is Life on Mars. But that has been cancelled and has only a couple more episodes to air. After that I won't have anything that night.

Thursday is the second most crowded night, mainly because Bones and Smallville are on at the same time. I'm also sticking with Supernatural, mainly because there's only seven episodes left. Both Supernatural and Smallville have been renewed, although I've practically lost interest in both shows so I'll have to wait until I see what's on in the fall before I decide to continue with then. I'm only bothering to watch out the season in case I do.

This friday will air the last Battlestar Galactica. After that I won't really have anything to watch that night. And with the exception of The Mentalist, there's nothing on network TV of interest to me all weekend.

So for at least the next six weeks I'll have a fairly active TV schedule, although half those shows are not likely to be back next year. Which is fine, because I'm running out of space on videotapes with movies and specials I've taped but have yet to watch. That I expect I will be doing during the summer.

It's time for television to embrace the mini-series again. I don't mean those two or three part movies which are mistakenly called mini-series, but the mini-series the way it was intended; as 12 or 13 episode shows.

The mini-series doesn't have a definite length, but generally is between six and twelve episodes in length. Originally it was defined as "a series too short to fill a full season." Somewhere along the way they became shorter and shorter until many were calling two episode movies mini-series.

The mini-series is a particularly American invention. In England they just refer to them as a regular series. One of the best examples of this is Life on Mars, which was two eight-episode series. In the US, that wouldn't even be enough for a full season.

Networks started making mini-series because they wanted to produce a show that was too long for a TV movie but too short for a full series. And budget also became a factor. Many shows, like V, were made as mini-series because the network couldn't afford the cost of a full series since each episode cost so much. (Ironically, the last episode of the V mini-series had a very unclimactic ending and made it appear that the producers ran out of money. The subsequent series fixed this to some degree.)

While the mini-series seemed to rule during the 70s and 80s, the abundance of them along with other changes in television made them less attractive to viewers. As such networks didn't want to risk running long runs of mini-series which they might, and sometimes did, cancel. So many mini-series, such as 10th Kingdom, were jammed into a few weeks and others shorted to being nothing more than two or three part movies that ran subsequent weeks or even days.

Now the trend seems to be getting back to the mini-series, but for regular series. Crusoe wasn't intended as a mini-series but since it's only thirteen parts, if it ends the story reasonably then it could be considered one. Although generally a cancelled show is not a mini-series. The ending of the mini-series is pre-planned. (This is the sort of show that normally would just have been cancelled in the past, but since the networks are so short of shows this year they have had to make concessions. And it does help DVD sales, which can be used to make back lost revenue.)

Another trend, apparently influenced by the writer's strike, is to split regular series into two parts. The most obvious use of this is with the last season of Battlestar Galactica. Heroes is also making use of this technique by dividing the stories for each season. While there has always been a split during the Holidays, deliberately planning on the hiatus is relatively new.

Many TV shows started as mini-series. V was one of the first, although Battlestar Galactica was a way for the networks to judge whether the story would have enough viewers to support a regular series.

TV movies have been used in a similar way. The Bionic Man started as a TV movie, which in turn led to a popular series with a moderately successful (three season) spin-off. Coincidentally, the end of The Bionic Man came at the same time as the start of the Roots mini-series. (Possibly helping the ratings for Roots.) Hercules started as a movie, which led to a few more, then onto a successful syndicated series which spawned another popular series, Xena.

Although this doesn't always work. Man from started as four movies. Their success led to a series which wound up getting cancelled in it's first season. So even a mini-series can't always gage the popularity of a show since many will only commit themselves for the short run. But overall, it's still better than running a full season of a show that just doesn't appear to the viewers and winds up stranding those viewers that aren't interested.

Some of the best shows started as mini-series or movies, and some of the shows I've most liked started that way. And there's still a few mini-series that I've liked that have never been more than mini-series. 10th Kingdom was a good length for a mini-series and I've watched it many times since. (I initally taped it then picked up the DVD later.)

Unlike a regular TV series, a mini-series doesn't require as much of a time commitment. And a popular mini-series could then become a regular series or at least follow with a subsequent mini-series. With many turning away from TV to other time-consuming forms of entertainment, the mini-series just might be the way for television to go.