First Two Weeks: Let's Play A Game!

A few weeks ago, when reviewing another year of predicting all the new series fates after just two data points, I said I had kind of made my point with this idea and was looking to switch it up somehow. There seemed to be some interest in adding an interactive aspect to it. So for anyone who's interested, we can give that a try this season. Here are my rough ideas for how that will work, and feedback is very welcome.

First of all, what I post will be very simple: I'm just listing the ratings, lead-ins and competition for week 1 and 2 (along with the percent drop) with no further prose and no prognosis. (Out-of-timeslot previews will be included but count as "week zero"; these go up after two regular slot airings.) This setup should be less work for me and more fun for you! Win-win!

Then it will be up to you to make the renewal/cancellation call. I wanted to incorporate some sort of confidence point system into this, with a couple ideas in mind:

1) There should be a significant penalty for missing a high-confidence pick. For example, last year I felt pretty strongly that two out of Mom, The Crazy Ones and The Millers would be renewed, but I had no real read on which ones, so I just said renew for all three. In that kind of situation, if it was one-point-won-per-point-wagered at every confidence level, it would still be best to go highest-confidence on each bet. And that's not what I would want. Overconfidence should be heavily penalized if it's wrong.

2) There should not be a penalty for missing a low-confidence pick. In other words, as with The Question, I don't want to give an incentive for sitting out. It should be "safe" to take a flier at the lowest level. So missing on the lowest-confidence level should be worth no less than zero points.

I initially thought about having multiple levels of confidence, but I don't think much is lost game-wise by only having two tiers. So here's my rough idea for point values. Please let me know if this should be tweaked, as I'm very open to it:

Win, CONFIDENT: +2 points
Win, NOT CONFIDENT: +1 point
Loss, NOT CONFIDENT: 0 points
Loss, CONFIDENT: -2 points (or even more?)

The posts will close at 6:00 am the morning after the third airing, and I will put them up the morning of or shortly before the third airing. I thought about putting them up right after week two finals come out, but I often looked at what happened with other shows across the next six days. I don't want to rob you of that advantage, and I don't want to make you have to remember to come back days later.

I thought about adding the option to defer to week three, an option I've given myself in earlier years, although that would also add the undesirable issue about having to remind people to come back later. So let me know on that. If we do it: I'm pretty sure you should not be able to win a "confident" amount after deferring, so a win on a deferral will be worth one. And I also want a penalty for a loss after deferring, to prevent people from deferring in every single less confident situation. -1 point?

Anyway, this is probably roughly how it will go, but I'm willing to be swayed by your comments. Let me know, and the first one (Red Band Society) will go up on Tuesday or Wednesday.