GraphJam Side A · Music & pop culture in charts
The Plate Archive27 charts

Television, in Charts and Flow Diagrams

A format that repeats every week is the easiest thing in the world to chart, and the hardest to defend.

A weekly programme is a repeated procedure, and a repeated procedure can be diagrammed. That is why so many entries here are procedures rather than opinions, and why the best of them are structural rather than critical: they do not argue that television is bad, they show that it is predictable.

The procedural, anatomised

Typical Episode of House, M.D. is the model case. A medical procedural runs the same five beats in the same order every week, so a stacked chart of one episode is a chart of every episode. Things I Learned From Watching CSI does the same job by listing what the format teaches that is not true, and PERCENT OF CRIMES SOLVED plots the single number that separates the genre from the profession it depicts.

Things That Happen on LOST takes a show built on withheld information and counts the withholding. I Think We’re LOST, from May 2010, holds five referring domains, the most in this collection, and arrived in the month the series ended, when a very large number of people wanted a diagram that explained it.

Talent shows as decision procedures

American Idol Flow Chart is the one entry here that is arguably a better description of its subject than any prose review. A competition with a fixed elimination rule is a flow chart; drawing it as one is not satire, it is transcription.

An Hour Of American Idol takes the same programme and accounts for its hour, which is where the criticism actually lands. Its image is not among those recovered. Interest in American Idol names the trend in its title; its image is not among those recovered. Breakdown of the Price is Right Audience and Celebrity Jeopardy! apply the method to older formats.

Channels that drifted

Three charts document something that was happening in cable at exactly this moment and would be hard to evidence otherwise. Travel Channel Programming, History channel guide and The Unified Theory Of Primetime TV In 2010 all plot the gap between a channel’s name and its schedule. They are jokes about brand drift, drawn while the drift was in progress, by viewers who had noticed before the trade press did.

Mythbusters: Blowin’ Stuff Up And Callin’ It Science! from September 2010 is the last entry in the collection and belongs to the same family, a chart about the proportion of a science programme that is science.

Advertising, and the Snuggie

Snuggie, it’s the Blanket with Sleeves! and Snuggies are both from 2009, both hold their links, and both plot a product with one feature that was advertised as though it had several. Overtly Ridiculous Melodramatic Actors in US Television History is a ranking with no methodology, and Likelihood of You Knowing the Answer to the $1,000,000 Question is a chart about the format of a quiz rather than its content.

Ten of the twenty-seven entries here still have their image; the rest are titles and dates. The recovery rate is low because most of this ran in 2009 and 2010, on the hosting arrangement whose files survived least well, which is an ordinary archival accident, not a judgement on the charts.

Charts here
27
Images recovered
10
Published as plates
0
Referring domains
37
First posted
Apr 2008
Last posted
Sep 2010

The charts

In publication order. Sides run in tens, the way a record does. A chart marked as a plate has its own page and its own retrospective; the rest are published here, at the addresses they held when they were posted.

  1. A1

    Kenny’s Knowledge

    · 2 domains still link here

  2. A2

    Celebrity Jeopardy!

    · Drawn by MyHonker

  3. A3

    The United States According To Network Executives

    · Drawn by Lisa W

  4. A4

    What is lost when the radar is “Jammed”

    · Drawn by Jack

  5. A5

    Bizarro Jerry

    · Drawn by Mikko Makela · image not recovered

  6. A6

    Age Demographic of Mutant Ninja Turtles

    · Drawn by Brian Dowling · image not recovered

  7. A7

    Kermit the Frog’s Abilities

    · Drawn by Maafoo · image not recovered

  8. A8

    Overtly Ridiculous Melodramatic Actors in US Television History

    · Drawn by Speaker Family · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  9. A9

    Quagmire’s Vocabulary

    · Drawn by Jessie M · image not recovered

  10. A10

    Breakdown of the Price is Right Audience

    · Drawn by Matt L · image not recovered

  11. Side B
  12. B1

    An Hour Of American Idol

    · Drawn by Jordan S · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  13. B2

    Travel Channel Programming

    · Drawn by J. Barrack Schofield · image not recovered

  14. B3

    Interest in American Idol

    · image not recovered

  15. B4

    Snuggie, it’s the Blanket with Sleeves!

    · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  16. B5

    Things That Happen on LOST

    · Drawn by kibbles

  17. B6

    Typical Episode of House, M.D.

    · Drawn by badtwinkie

  18. B7

    American Idol Flow Chart

    · Drawn by MissAJ

  19. B8

    Snuggies

    · image not recovered

  20. B9

    PERCENT OF CRIMES SOLVED

    · Drawn by dogheadbuttchow

  21. B10

    Things I Learned From Watching CSI

    · Drawn by lawlzchelsea

  22. Side C
  23. C1

    Likelihood of You Knowing the Answer to the $1,000,000 Question

    · Drawn by KissMeKate02 · image not recovered

  24. C2

    History channel guide

    · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  25. C3

    The Unified Theory Of Primetime TV In 2010

    · image not recovered

  26. C4

    I Think We’re LOST

    · Drawn by Kittehmastr · 5 domains still link here · image not recovered

  27. C5

    Space: The Final Frontier

    · 2 domains still link here

  28. C6

    What are we doing tonight brain

    · image not recovered

  29. C7

    Mythbusters: Blowin’ Stuff Up And Callin’ It Science!

    · Drawn by Sunburn3011 · image not recovered

Queries answered

What is in the Television collection?

Twenty-seven charts about broadcast television, drawn between April 2008 and September 2010. Procedurals, talent shows, cable channel drift, and the advertising that ran between them.

Which show is charted most often?

LOST and American Idol, both of which ran through the whole life of the archive and both of which had a structure regular enough to plot. Between them they account for five of the twenty-seven entries.

What is the flow chart in this collection?

American Idol Flow Chart, from March 2009. A talent show is a decision procedure, so a flow chart is the honest diagram for it, which is the joke and also a fair description of the programme.

Why are there charts about the Snuggie?

Because the advertising was inescapable in early 2009 and the product had exactly one feature. Two entries here plot it. Neither is affectionate.

Why are some entries missing their image?

The original chart images lived on a host that now errors, so every onedid not survive on its original host. Where no copy survived, the title, date and address are kept.