The following appeared as part of an article on trends in television.
A recent study of viewers attitudes toward prime-time television programs shows that many of the programs that were judged by their viewers to be of high quality appeared on television networks, and that, on commercial television, the most popular shows are typically sponsored by the best-selling products. Thus, it follows that businesses who use commercial television to promote their products will achieve the greatest advertising success by sponsoring only highly-rated programsand, ideally, programs resembling the highly-rated noncommercial programs on public channels as much as possible.
This article concludes that businesses using commercial television to promote their products will achieve the greatest advertising success by sponsoring only highly-rated programspreferably, programs resembling the highly-rated non-commercial programs on public channels. Supporting this claim is a recent study indicating that many programs judged by viewers to be high in quality appeared on noncommercial networks, and that the most popular shows on commercial television are typically sponsored by the best-selling products. This argument is weak because it depends on three questionable assumptions.
The first of these assumptions is that noncommercial public television programs judged by viewers to be high in quality are also popular. However, the study cited by the author concerns viewer attitudes about the high quality of programs on noncommercial public television, not about their popularity. A program might rate highly as to quality but not in terms of popularity. Thus, the author unfairly assumes that highly-rated public television programs are necessarily widely viewed, or popular.
