Let me be clear from the start, I didn't watch Wednesday night's Fox "documentary" on Nadya Suleman, "Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage."
I tried, but the opening scene of Suleman primping and mugging for the camera as she brought her herd home so disgusted me that I had to stop watching. It's still there, all two hours of it, on my DVR. But I can't bring myself to go back to it.
I'm sure I'll feel better when I hit delete.
Instead of writing about the show today, I'm going to offer some numbers that are both heartening and disheartening, thanks to Nielsen Media Research, the folks who measure our TV viewing.
First, the good news. "Octomom" wasn't the top-rated prime-time show on Wednesday night around the country. Nationally, the trashy special averaged 4.2 million viewers nationally over its two-hour run. NBC beat Fox for the night with its "America's Got Talent" averaging 7.9 million viewers. No, "Talent" isn't great television. But its Wednesday night victory over the Octomom's bizarre story is somehow heartening for the future of the Republic.
Now brace yourself for the bad news: Channel 6's airing of the Octo-fest topped Wednesday night's Nielsen list for the Milwaukee TV market. It averaged 57,040 southeast Wisconsin homes, with Channel 4's airing of NBC's "Talent" pulling in 54,324 households.
Let's accentuate the positive here. It wasn't a huge win or a huge audience, only an 11% share of Milwaukee TV households that were watching on Wednesday night, compared to the 10% watching Channel 4.
Nationally, we're in the dog days of TV viewing and the fact that the heavily hyped "incredible unseen footage" didn't wipe out all opposition is good news. Really, smart viewers should flee from any show that calls itself "incredible." And the buzz is that the lackluster national numbers may doom Suleman's cable "reality" series.
That would be good for all of us, especially her kids.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
