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HTG Archive Radio
Topic Started: Mar 29 2012, 12:33 PM (543 Views)
CzarTim
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CzarTim
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HTG-Rays

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CzarTim
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Session 12 Buzz

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CzarTim
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Session 12 Week 1 Ratings

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Teufel
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The Man, The Myth, The Legend
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Cool and informative as always.
Decepticon Liberation Front
No missed release dates since 2017.
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RitchieSteven
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Administrator
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Really love these, keep up the good work!

Hollywood the Game | Flip Brothers Studio | RS Creative | My Hollywood Dream
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Syavash
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This is one of the coolest parts of the game.
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CzarTim
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Box Office Blues

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brianc2008
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Looking forward to it.
Horizon Pictures is open and accepting submissions.

We will return in 2018!

The Most Interesting Game on the Internet:
Hollywood the Game
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CzarTim
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Session 14 Rule Changes

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CzarTim
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Evolution of the Ratings Sheet

When I first started doing the weekly ratings for HTG:TV, it was an almost overwhelming amount of work. It was no surprise that the position of TV Admin was so often vacant. At the time, no one had kept the job for more than a few sessions.

I took over for Session 7. The first thing that struck me was how much repletion there was in the data input. Network Executives had to post their schedule and each show's info (such as buzz, TS, etc) on the forums, and then I had to take all that data and enter it into an Excel spreadsheet. It was incredibly tedious as you can imagine. Being the lazy man I am, I decided to begin experiment with alternatives. It has been a slow and ever-evolving process.

1. http://i.imgur.com/SuyLvPK.png
Example of a schedule post. Each network had its own thread and made a new post each week.

It would take another session to get rid of those posts, but Session 8 did bring the switch from Excel to Google Docs. This was essential to moving to an automatic sheet due to Google's great social features which are not available in Excel (multiple people can edit a sheet at the same time!) As I had only limited experience with spreadsheets prior to doing ratings, recreating the sheet was a great learning experience, both in spreadsheet basics as well as how the ratings work. I was still having to re-enter everything, however, so I wasn't quite satisfied.

2. http://i.imgur.com/Qi1t1ty.png
Recreated from scratch, the ratings are now in Googleland!

HTG:TV's experiment in Cable was next, and it gave me the perfect opportunity to do an experiment myself. I wanted to get rid of the need for NetHeads to post their info on the forum. Why not cut out the middleman?

This part got off to a bad start. At first I made a form (similar to how I do buzz or Sully voting). My intention was for the NetHeads to fill it out each week. Lucian wisely pointed out that this was just as redundant. My intention had been to make the transition easier on the NetHeads, but that method did not actually make anything easier for anyone.

So I landed on a new idea: Each network would have a page in the ratings sheet to enter all the same info, and all that would go into a separate page where the ratings were calculated. Since some of this info was always the same from week to week (like Buzz), I could even have a handy little guide on the side so they could copy-and-paste.

3. http://i.imgur.com/VvkmRwO.png
A new cable spreadsheet was copied from a blank 'master sheet' each week.

It wasn't perfect, but it was a start. The first problem that stuck out was the fact that some of the info was the same every week, and yet the NetHeads had to enter it anyway. Having a cheat sheet was nice, but I wanted to go further. Having to remake the ratings sheet to accommodate the timeslots increase as we returned to regular TV gave me the opportunity to do just that. I did a bit of research to find a method of auto-filling in cells based on another cell.

4. http://i.imgur.com/3JxTYGO.png
The information listed at the top came up on the schedule after the NetHead entered the shows name. This meant no more filling out more than what was needed.

Version 3.0 of the sheet lasted through Session 9 and 10, but I wasn't done yet. A few things began to bother me: Firstly, up until this point, the NetHeads were having to manually track their cost and profits. Secondly, I was having to make a new sheet each week to do the ratings. And finally, why even have the information that is the same each week on the scheduling page if it never changes? This was going to take a big effort, but it was worth it. v4.0 would be an all encompassing megasheet that had all the information a growing NetHead needed.

Each network had a page that held all the master information for each show. This time it wasn't just Buzz and TS, but costs and profit so the NetHeads didn't have to track this information themselves.

5. http://i.imgur.com/3NqJWaG.png
The Network page broke down info on each series.

6. http://i.imgur.com/tURL107.png
The weekly schedule page was in the same spreadsheet and only required the NetHeads to enter the info that was actually new each week. It was the first time all three networks entered their schedule on the same page.

This version lasted for both Session 11 and 12. Before Session 13, I took on another huge task: putting my spreadsheet skills to use in making an automatic Box Office. My experience with TV helped a lot in that respect, but the BO was so much more complicated that I ended up picking up a few tricks that would come in handy for TV as well. Just when I think I'll never have to remake the sheet, I find something new. So I delved in to v5.0. While on its surface it looks very similar to v4.0, in actuality it add a ton of new features under the hood that made doing the ratings much, much easier. Not least of which was a new feature which had the spreadsheet auto-format the ratings so all I needed to do was copy and paste onto the forums. Since that was one of the most time consuming aspects of doing the ratings, I was happy to have the help.

v5.0 had to be modified a bit due to the new rules introduced for Session 14, but it's still going strong!

7. http://i.imgur.com/2scFqxE.png
v5.0 has a slimmer schedule page.

Even though each iteration of the ratings sheet has been small steps forward, it's amazing how far it has come. It has made the job of the NetHeads and TV Admin much easier and slicker. Each new version has brought new tools to make TV more dynamic. I'm not sure what the next chapter will bring, but I can't wait to work on it when the challenge appears!
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Goliathus
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Respect on making things better over and over again. :happy:
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