I've checked into this (the 1057 figure), and they sent out a new report
and it's still the same figure. If you add the two figures together,
they're 926, which is *still* the highest figure around, so the facts
still stand.

We had broken 1000 several other times in the "both" category, the week of
4/1 at 1057 and 4/29 at 1022; don't have the other weeks at hand.

I talked at length to one of the researchers about this, and he said he
was going to backtrack with the Neilsen company and see what they had to
say. (They're the company that actually does the computations and pulls
in the figures, WB has nothing to do with it, all syndicated shows get the
same reports.)

He did indiate that there are a certain percentage of forms that come in
where the person with the ratings book for one reason or another chooses
not to put down either his/her sex or the sex of the person watching with
them. (Some consider it a privacy issue, some don't want to indicate that
they're alone at home at night watching with a person of the same sex, so
they "forget" to put it down, or just withhold the information.) So
there's always some variance; they can't just ignore the data of the
number of persons watching, but they can't plug in what they don't have.

For instance, in Hercules for that quarter, you've got a figure of 369 for
women, 360 for men, and a total of 730, which is 1 more than the two
figures combined.

So the researcher is going to backtrack some more, but indicated that it
may be that we have an unusually high number of same-sex couples who watch
the show, but may be somewhat closeted about it. Which would be
consistent with the fact that we get a lot of mail from gays and lesbians
who watch the show.

I'll be out of town for a couple weeks, but will eventually get back to
this.


jms