Below The Fold

Something I noticed on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which I watched Monday night:

Christine Lahti rocks.

Additionally, I think Studio 60 might be my new favorite show this season. It has great dialogue, allows Matthew Perry to be snarky without being stupid (the real failure of his movie outings. See The Whole 10 Yards if you need a refresher. That movie was almost as watchable as ducks vomiting. Almost.), serves up a great formula for enduring success (musical guests, the weekly writing process, good character chemistry, making fun of the TV corporate world, etc.) and, best of all, features D.L. Hughley. D.L. Hughley is this year’s Bernie Mac, except funnier.
Christine Lahti is in a guest role as a Vanity Fair writer doing a piece on the Studio 60 show. She’s an elegant stateswoman of character roles for TV; someone who slips into a character so comfortably, you’re pretty sure the role was written for her. And, she’s what the internet pr0n community would refer to as a “milf.”
Anyway, that story I linked to above about Studio 60’s ratings slump malaise mentioned my other favorite new show (yes, I have more than one. As opposed to the LEGIONS of shows I hate, like Deal or No Deal, Anything with “Celebrities” in it where they’re being touted as “Celebrities” {except for Celebrity Death Match, which kind of rocked} and One Tree in Everwood’s OC. Man, if it wasn’t for Smallville, I’d never even watch the CW. Wow. I just used a bracketed aside in a parenthetical aside.), Heroes, which is doing very well in its time slot. And I realized that I watched Heroes live this week (stupid Tony Kornheiser. You suck so bad I quit watching MNF at the half, and didn’t see the Bears mount a defense-driven comeback that may stand as one of the greatest defensive performances in football. I hate you, Tony Kornheiser. HATE YOU.), but used my DVR and watched Studio 60 last night, even though it was on right after Heroes.
So I began to wonder what impact DVR technology (TIVO, etc.) has on Nielsen ratings. I looked it up, and according to this White Paper by Jim Tindaro of Advanced Marketing Strategies, not much. Apparently, Nielsen’s already got it figured all out, so really, everyone just needs to watch Studio 60…
Unless… I see it now… some marketing company develops some hack program that allows DVRs to record and playback a whole slew of shows when no one’s home. Then the marketing company pays people to install the hack, and fraudulently inflates the ratings of the shows they’re trying to sell ad space on…
…hmmmm…