Basketball On The Internet.

BASKETBALL fans are so incredibly fickle, it does my head in at times.

One minute we're in danger of not even having an NBL, then next someone's complaining because some poor bastard calling his first NBL game on TV got a player's name wrong.

(And I don't mean mispronouncing Schenscher.)

So on the one hand, while most of us are enraptured to have the chance to see every NBL game on television, already we have experts poring over the "ratings" and crying woe, predicting FOX will nix the five-year deal after Year One.

ECSTATIC: Jermaine Beal celebrates his game-breaking three against Adelaide. This is how NBL fans should feel after Week 1, not finding new reasons to bitch and moan. Maybe go follow bocce?

Firstly, free-to-air television works to a formula.

I'm not 100 per cent across this but there's something like 1,000 ratings boxes in homes, the figure for people watching a program then multipled by whatever it takes to represent the households of Australia that the FTA program potentially could reach.

That's not even the number yet. This (very) inexact science then also multiples that number by the potential number of viewers per location which, I believe, correlates with the last census. So hypothetically, if there are currently 3.7 people living in a home with a TV, then the number off the 1,000 boxes is multipled by the amount it takes to represent the number of TVs in use, times the number of potential viewers in a location.

Yeah. It's crap. But TV executives poo their pants at the thought of properly monitoring viewing habits digitally, in case there WEREN'T one million people watching Masterchef. There may have been 500,000!

Or, conversely, two million. It's risky to know the truth.

But sticking with the status quo is what FTA is all about. Factor in how much speculative BS is involved the next time you get your knickers in a twist about "ratings".

So to FOX.

The pay-TV network knows exactly how many of its boxes are tuned to any program at any given time and that is the figure it gives.

Is that accurate?

Hell no.

For example, if there's four people at my place watching the basketball - or 100 in a pub somewhere - all FOX is registering is that my box and the box at the hotel are tuned in to the same program. That is, TWO is the ratings figure it gets, not 104.

And additionally, I watched every game FOX showed last week but only one of them live. I IQed (that's "taped to watch later" for anyone older than 40) the other games.

Even though I watched seven games, FOX only picked me up watching once live. The six other times I watched games later on IQ don't count. And that one game I watched live with three others? Only registered one box/one viewer.

FOX understands this of course, so pretty sure there's no execs currently sweating Round One's viewing figures/ratings.

Unlike a great many hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing basketball fans.

Online

Andrej Lemanis on Bogey's weight loss: http://bit.ly/1LCtVCB

Joey Wright loving the new Blanchfield: http://bit.ly/1R8hTFF