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December 27, 2024, 10:13:54 AM

we're back, baby

Now that I'm home and can elaborate:

The numbers given aren't an expression of how in demand a show is, they represent what Parrot Analytics refer to as a "Demand Expression" score. They have a nice, complication equation listed on their site as well as a list of what data they pull in for it, as well as how that data is ranked. For instance, at the top of the list are things like "monetary expressions" (actual purchases), and "active consumption" (watching the episodes, and they take torrent traffic into account there as well), and at the lower end things like "public posting", "expressing and opinion", "subscribing to updates", and "passive impressions". They don't into specific numbers of how each category is weighted. From what I've seen they also don't explain how they get a lot their data. How do they know how many people have bought an episode or subscribed to updates for instance?

Regardless, it's not actually a metric showing demand or popularity, it's an algorithm designed to express brand engagement. As far as them being used widely, I've taken a bit of a look at that also. They did a presentation for the first "Variety Innovate" summit hosted by Variety last year, and Variety has generally seemed willing to bring them up in articles since then.

CBS Studios International signed an agreement with them as well. They distribute CBS, CW, and CBS All Access shows. This happened months after Parrot Analytics announced: "‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Top Digital Original and Overall TV Show, Parrot Analytics Says" so I'm not saying they're improperly influenced to make CBS distributed shows look better, but it's possible that CBS shares more data with them, which would possibly increase the "demand expression" score for some of their shows.

So who else is using them, and how else is their name getting out there? Well the MAOS news is a good example. Entertainment news site Screen Rant provided the initial article which was then linked to by dozens of other news sites, probably in part because of the click-bait headline "Agents of SHIELD Is More Popular Than Any Marvel Netflix Show". Now as discussed, Parrot Analytics is not actually measuring popularity, but what prompted Screen Rant to run this article in the first place? The first paragraph:

Quote

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. truly is Marvel's flagship TV series: the show's brand is actually stronger than any of the Marvel Netflix series. That's according to data provided exclusively to Screen Rant by Parrot Analytics, a data science company that measures world-wide audience demand for TV content.

So in this case Parrot Analytics went to a site and provided them with the data, presumably because it helps get them publicity (in this case it worked). They've also partnered with another site called Media Play News who post up the weekly numbers which sometimes seem to get linked to by other sites.

Again, this just happened to be something I had already been looking into because I had seen similar articles recently referencing Parrot Analytics. Despite my snark, my point was mostly "stop for a second, move past the headline and see what the data actually is and what it's saying". Yes, Nielsen ratings are increasingly useless, but that doesn't mean we need to attach ourselves to the first new metric that comes along with a shit-ton of marketing buzzwords.

Right. Giant conspiracy. Check.

So you think they revamp the formulas they use to get whatever result they want each time they use it? Every go round is entirely reverse engineered from the results they want? OK. Because that seems to be what you're implying with your syndicate of conspiracy.

Quote from: jgsugden on November 19, 2018, 03:17:19 PM

Man, you really just side-stepped that whole thing where the numbers didn't even mean what you thought they did.

Is it a conspiracy? No. It's a score-based system and the more data they have on a show, the higher its score is likely to be. For instance something small like the "subscribes to updates" category would be hard to get numbers or even estimates for assuming they're talking about things like e-mail mailing lists and such. A show that has that data provided by the studio would have a score advantage over a show that doesn't. That's not a conspiracy, that's the formula.

The same goes for the most heavily weighted category of monetary expressions. Unless Parrott Analytics is severely overestimating purchases when they don't have actual sales figures, a studio that gives them solid data on all digital and physical purchases would again likely have better numbers for their shows.

By all means though we could probably get into conspiracy theory territory because any system that uses social media engagement as a factor is open to manipulation. Ultimately though I wouldn't give a fuck about the numbers one way or the other because as a consumer, measuring brand engagement holds zero interest for me. My problem is the sites (and message board posters) who conflate the numbers with demand or popularity.

Right. By the way, the tin foil hate is tres chic.

Hey, if you're going to make it your mission in life to repost any and all MCU news here, just take the time to actually read and comprehend it. I mean, you have one job here.

I do comprehend enough.

You comprehend more than is there. You're concerned that we can't trust a demand metric because it has a secret formula and is going to have biases and people support it when they see it supporting their shows and ... yawn.

Why the fuck do you care so much?

When it comes to Marvel TV and films, you are not the right person to be asking that question of anyone.

Final season coming, notable for the Agent Carter elements included in it. May 27.

While this show has dwindled into fan fiction realms over time, I am curious if they'll do anything to try to explain the inconsistencies with the Endgame Time Travel ideas. As it was mostly done before Endgame was released, I'd say no. I'm just wondering if they'll officially mark the plethora of all Marvel TV as 'It is all unconnected'.

Whether they say it's all connected or not, none of it mattered. The shows all had to either learn about what happened in the movies pretty much when we did and adjust, or just ignore them and focus on their silo. They were never included in the plan, or thought about in the plan.

Missed opportunity, but it's not like the movies suffered for it at the end of the day.

The movies had ample opportunity to make even the slightest reference to any of the Marvel TV characters and they chose not to at every turn. The only exception is Jarvis from Agent Carter (a show created by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely who wrote a lot of the movies including Infinity War and Endgame). It doesn't matter whether or not AoS tries to find some way to explain away the inconsistencies, it's clear that the reason for those inconsistencies is because they were completely out of the loop.

But the question that remains is whether they go back on "It is all connected" by ignoring MAoS, Carter, C&D, Runaways, and the Netflix shows in the MCU continuity, or if they respect them. It seems likely we'll know in the next several years if they introduce the Illuminati, etc...

I'm guessing that they'll end MAOS with a "and we changed the timeline" event that gives them an out for any inconsistencies we encounter - and there is likely to be a bunch of them considering Loki is to use the Time Variance Authority and MAoS is using a lot of time travel shenanigans.

Nothing on Agents of SHIELD or any of the past Marvel TV shows has any relevance to the MCU from this point forward. If it isn't on Disney+, just consider it to be a different continuity altogether.

I think they pretty much went back on "It's all connected" when Whedon said that he considered Coulson to still be dead in the movies. If the question is whether or not they'll do anything to directly contradict any of those shows, or create new versions of those characters, I think for the most part they're not going to be in a hurry to do anything with most of those characters. I don't think Feige is dying to do a movie version of Runaways or Cloak & Dagger. I'm guessing a large part of the reason Marvel TV was able to use a lot of these characters is because the Feige didn't have even distant plans for them.

There's ongoing rumors of another season of Daredevil because fans, the cast, and the crew all seemed to want it. I would expect Daredevil to be more of a standalone thing rather than get more connections to the MCU if they do bring it back. I also remember reading rumors that Feige like Bernthal as the Punisher but didn't really care for the show much (which is about where I am with it) and might look to reuse Bernthal but reboot the character. Those are currently the only two characters I see them maybe wanting to decide sooner rather than later what they want to do with.

Whedon's statements were that - because many people only see the movies - he would not bring Coulsen back into the movies as it would confuse those people. For pure movie going audiences, the chaacter had to effectively remain dead.

To date nothing in the movies beyone the mechanics of time travel in MAoS contradict TV, and nothing else in TV contradicts the movies. There are huge questions raised by one that are ignored by the other (Where are the Inhumans in the movies? Why didn't we see the snap in MAoS?), but they do not contradict each other. It seems like there are going to need to be some reconciliations between the existing TV series and the MCU proper if they aregoing to do Ms. Marvel.

Regardless, we'll see what happens.

If you allow the sort of plot devices comics allow you don't really need to work hard to fix continuity. The MCU is about fun characters bouncing off each other, not about building a coherent world in which you can imagine other stories off screen.

Oh it was time travel. Oh the dead guy got better.

So long as you do it up front in the premise so it doesn't interrupt the story you are telling right now, and doesn't change who Tony stark or Steve Rodger is, it just doesn't matter.

And Whedon was wrong about this. Coulson being alive would have been easy in the MCU wanted him for any reason.

If RDJ wants to come back as Iron man he can. It isn't cost free and there is probably some limit to how often they do it. But they can do it if they want.

It ended with a whimper that made little to no sense. I was very disappointed.

Isn't it plain now that "he's dead in the movies" wasn't Whedon but instead a collateral effect of a struggle to the death between Feige and Perlmutter?

I thought the finale was pretty good in the grand scale of things. Lots of callbacks and easter eggs. Some resonant moments. Can think of lots of shows that biffed the landing much worse.

They made a promise when it started - It is All Connected - and (regardless of WHY) they backed away from it after early in season 2.

They ended the series and handed over the key to several characters, essentially setting them up so that Feige could pick up the pieces and use them under his control. We could see Daisy Johnson next to Nick Fury. We could see Mack in a senior role in SHIELD under Fury. We could see Coulsen as an LMD back in SHIELD. All of it could happen - but likely won't (Daisy Johnson being the one element I could see them using, but avoiding any detailed references to MAoS).

Well, I never really cared about it connecting to the MCU so none of that bothered me. Always viewed it as its own self-contained property.