CollegeStudents

Something about the syndicated Who Wants to Be a Millionaire seems off this season. It might be the gimmicky "Tournament of Ten" that they've been building towards; it starts next week. Or it might be the bumped-up money tree they've instituted, paired with tougher questions; now it's easier to get the first safety level (now $5,000) but much more difficult to get to the second (still $25,000).

But what might also be off is that the producers have been mixing in some very young contestants into the show, and when they're on, the program screeches to a halt.

Why? They're too young. Even if they're the most book-smart kids on the planet, their knowledge of pop culture and historic events goes back maybe ten years, and those questions are a large part of the stack most contestants get.

Why do college students get all the breaks? It looks like Fox will be offering the premieres of both Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and J.J. Abrams' Fringe at fox.com for those with a .edu e-mail address. They will also offer some behind-the-scenes footage, music videos and interviews.

This is a clever marketing ploy by Fox. The demographic for those shows definitely leans towards the young, and since college students are more exposed to computers than anybody I know who doesn't work in the industry (and are probably more used to watching stuff online rather than on the television), the idea has definite appeal.

Mind you, such systems can be fooled, particularly if you have a friend or relative with a .edu address (or so I've heard). With that in mind, I don't understand why Fox wouldn't just offer this to everybody. I can only guess that it's a way for Fox to control illegal downloading of these highly anticipated shows.

Nielsen has begun adding college students that live in dorms to its ratings. In practical terms, this means 130 drunk kids will represent about 2 million actual college students, and have an inordinately large influence on the television landscape.

The Wall Street Journal reports that some shows have seen a huge boost due to the inclusion of college student data. Comedy Central's Drawn Together saw a 60% ratings bump, which shouldn't be surprising, as I'm not sure anyone who doesn't live in a dorm watches the show. Of course, Nielsen estimated 163,000 additional people were watching the show based on the fact that 12 of those college kids were tuning in. Yay statistical sampling.

Nielsen gathers data from about 10,000 households and uses that data to extrapolate what the rest of the country is watching. While that system probably worked pretty well thirty years ago when there were only a handful of networks, viewers today can choose from hundreds of different channels.