A Very Spotty Thanksgiving

In terms of writing and editing, this blog is very much a one-man show. But there are lots of other things that have gone into making this blog happen, and on this American day of thanksgiving, I thought it was past time I recognize the people behind those things.

First, the "this blog would not exist without you" category. If there weren't publicly available ratings on the Internet, I flat-out wouldn't be able to do this. Those ratings past and present have come from a really wide variety of sources. They include but are not limited to: the network press releases, Marc Berman of Mediaweek/Adweek/TV Media Insights, TVByTheNumbers, TravisYanan, TVBill, Son of the Bronx, Sitcoms Online, The Futon Critic, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, the archives of ABC Media Net, AudiencesUSA and James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly. There are certainly a few others I'm forgetting or omitting for privacy reasons, but... thank you to all.

I also mostly created this page's design, which is the main reason why it's so ugly. But I do want to thank The TV Ratings for some help in that arena on a couple occasions. I also want to thank TV-aholic and Son of the Bronx for all the show icons I've "borrowed" over the years that go atop many of these pages. I am a disaster when it comes to the visual arts, so your help has been really valuable.

A special thank you to those select few who actually feel good enough about the stuff published herein to expose it to their own followings. Those include the folks at TVByTheNumbers, Chris Becker and her blog News for TV Majors, Matt Saylor and my old PIFeedback pal Jason Jacobs, all of whom have given my work multiple much-appreciated boosts in the past. There are a lot of people who I'm forgetting in this category (or maybe don't even know about) who have retweeted my own posts or the ones I've made in the last few months at SpoilerTV, but I tried to hit the big recurring ones. Your kindness has not gone unnoticed. And the biggest amplification thanks of all definitely goes to DarkUFO over at SpoilerTV, who's given me my first opportunity to write about television ratings on a larger stage than my own.

I definitely want to thank everyone who's ever taken the time to read one of my posts, and especially those "elite" few who regularly make it part of their day. Many of you I couldn't identify by any kind of name, but I do want to give a special shout-out to those who have made insightful comments here on a recurring basis, past or present: my fellow PIFeedbackers Zedman2, yankeesrj12 and TV-aholic along with BigTVFan, The TV Ratings and James Shade. And thanks also to all the (by my standards, many) SpoilerTV commenters who have made me feel welcome over there.

Finally, perhaps those I should thank most of all are those who inspired me to really start writing about this stuff. I'd give most of the credit for that to Marc Berman and TVByTheNumbers and, in particular, their great communities of TV ratings aficionados. That said, I didn't start this blog because I wanted to be a poor man's Berman or a poor man's TVBTN. I thought their work could be taken to an even higher level. My goal with just about every single thing I've ever done here is to provide something different yet still relevant. That's why I took so long (for a blog that is about TV ratings) to start doing a post about the ratings every day. It was a struggle for me to figure out how to stand out. I like to think that this approach has helped keep it enjoyable on my end and maybe, in some small ways, helped me build upon some of the things those people do.

This blog's grown quite a bit over its 2.5 years. It's still not "caught on" by most standards, and maybe it never will. But I like to think I'm doing something unique and operating at a pretty high level. I'll let all the other stuff take care of itself. As long as it's still fun and interesting for me (almost) every day, I'm not going anywhere. One last time... THANK YOU for whatever you've done, big or small, to help keep this train going. And a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

-Ed