The post-nuclear apocalypse drama Jericho was canceled by CBS earlier this year, but the network relented and renewed the show for seven more episodes after disappointed fans sent 25 tons of peanuts to CBS in protest. It's a great story of grassroots fan support.

Now that they've got seven more episodes to get it fired up again, some of the show's talent is speaking up about what they think hurt their ratings. Speaking with OnMilwaukee, actor Brad Beyer answered suggestions that the plot of the show was too slow by saying that the real problem with Jericho is that viewers weren't watching it as it was broadcast.

"The biggest problem with our show is that so many people were watching it on the Internet or Tivo (which doesn't count toward Nielsen ratings), so I think the fans are now aware to watch it when it's on," he said.

This isn't just Beyer's personal view, however. Nina Tassler, the president of CBS Entertainment, told the New York Times that if fans want the show to live, they need to watch the broadcast because that's how the money gets made. Stressing that live viewing is "of primary importance," Tassler said that "We want them to watch on Wednesday at 8 o'clock... and we need them to recruit new viewers who are going to watch the broadcast."

According to internal research at CBS, 8 percent of Jericho's viewers were recording the show and watching it later, amounting to some 700,000 households. The implication is that such a small slice of DVR usage can hurt a struggling show.

The question: is CBS full of it? According to Nielsen, DVR users added 32 percentage points of commercial viewership when factored into the results, so the notion that DVR users don't watch ads isn't entirely true. By our rough estimates, it's about half the normal rate for live viewers. There's a degree to which CBS is still making decisions based off of traditional valuations of viewers. Yet, the networks all say that advertisers believe that the only viewers worth paying for are those that watch ads live. After all, Crazy Eddie's sales are "going on now," not "going on 3-5 days from now."

Of course, as far as ratings are concerned, Jericho often ran head-to-head with American Idol, as the OnMilwaukee interview casually mentions. Something tells me that (*blu-buh-blu-*)Blake (*wiki-wiki*) and Jordin Sparks had more to do with Jericho's ratings than did TiVo. Is it really any surprise that Jericho had ratings problems running up against the most popular show on TV? I'd wager that this fact alone accounts for the higher percentages of DVR and Internet viewership CBS witnessed as compared to other programming.

Nevertheless, this "woe is the DVR" din is only going to get worse, and I've talked to more than a few people in the TV biz who are convinced that DVRs are eroding advertisers' willingness to pay top dollar for commercial spots. I've been told that the problem is particularly vicious for shows that have a high "geek quotient," like Stargate SG-1. DVR recording of that show is also quite high, but one must again ask: should Sci-Fi expect anything different considering that they run the new episodes on Friday nights?

Meanwhile, advertising dollars are leaving the TV realm and heading for the Internet in ever-increasing amounts. The DVR can't be blamed for that, and surely it's a sign of a more significant shift in the way people are spending their entertainment time: namely, online. And just why is that? I think there's one very simple explanation: the Internet is always "on demand." You use it when you want, how you want, and it's (almost) always there. CBS is swimming upstream by pleading with users to tune in on a specific day and a specific time. The day is most certainly coming when such scheduling obsessions are a thing of the past.