Well the companies, and advertisers are only interested in the "hard   
   numbers" the actual number of people who watch the shows live, and not   
   recorded. They know that recorded shows are bad for business, because   
   most people do the same thing you do, and fast forward through all the   
   commercials. So the commercials that they pay big bucks for are wasted   
   on people who watch recorded TV shows. So when a show has a rating of 6   
   million viewers it does not matter if they have 15 more million DVR   
   viewers. That does not really help the companies sell their products. As   
   long as the rating system is what it is there will always be shows that   
   are well received, with a lot of fans, cancelled early, because the hard   
   numbers are not there!   
      
   Remember when "Leonard Betts" X-File 4X14 had just under "17 million"   
   viewers on Jan 26 1997 right after the Super Bowl? That was an all time   
   high rating for an X-Files episode, and those were "hard" numbers. The   
   advertisers, and companies, loved the numbers. I think that one episode   
   secured the future of the X-Files for five more years, even though it   
   never saw numbers that high again.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)