junk science TV viewing figures are tiny

[stewgreen]

Good Talk by Richard Wiseman ... of course
I was a bit disappointed that he didn't stick up for proper science on TV against Junk science, but I guess they are his paymasters. (sometimes)

He was quite excited there are many more science programmmes.
There are, but it doesn't seem anyone is watching them according the official viewing figures.

Animal planets top show is 60,000 people
Braniac doesn't figure in Sky1's top 10 so it must pull in less that 500,000
The first episode of Horizon I noticed got 3 million.

(the figures appear to be the peak audience at a particular time, it doesn't say anything about being cumulative, so i guess you could get higher figures if you add up all of the repeats maybe, if it is reapeated)

http://www.barb.co.uk/viewingsummary/we ... imeout=500

So I hope it's true that the competition from the satellite channels motivates Terresterial channels to produce more science ... and not dumb down to be popularist.

I thinks it's important that the public get the right ideas about science not an idea that it all about simple experiments with certain answers

end of rant .. bye

PS do his books bear close skeptical analysis ..now there's another thing !

[Phil McKerracher]

Hmm, I wonder why the viewing figures are so low.

My personal experience is that people are indeed quite interested in science, but they switch off very quickly when they feel out of their depth. So I'm torn - on the one hand, I think it's very important to avoid jargon and unnecessary detail that puts people off science programmes, but on the other hand I'm often left dissatisfied when they endlessly repeat introductory stuff and then finish just before the real mystery is described.