{"id":401,"date":"2007-07-26T09:01:35","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T23:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/07\/26\/a-fishy-theory-about-cable-tv\/"},"modified":"2007-10-07T19:31:38","modified_gmt":"2007-10-07T09:31:38","slug":"a-fishy-theory-about-cable-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/07\/26\/a-fishy-theory-about-cable-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fishy Theory about Cable TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q: Why do fish swim in schools?<\/p>\n

[This isn’t a riddle, or a trick question<\/a>. It’s a legitimate question of piscean behaviour.]<\/p>\n

A: To reduce the chance that each fish is eaten by a predator. <\/p>\n

How does that work? <\/p>\n

The normal explanation goes as follows:<\/p>\n

\nImagine you are a solitary fish and a hungry predator sees you. You will be eaten.<\/p>\n

Now, imagine you are in a school of 100 fish, and a hungry predator sees the school. You only have a 1 in 100 chance of being eaten. (Assuming the predator only has a stomach big enough for one of you.)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve heard that explanation given many times, and, even as a kid, I found it unsatisfying.<\/p>\n

The ratio of predators to prey dropped from 1:1 to 1:100 between the two scenarios. What happened to all those other predators who were feasting on your friends in the school? A fairer way of looking at it would be: Imagine you are in a school of 100 fish, and 100 hungry predators see the school…<\/p>\n

\n

When I was an adult, someone (probably my father, Joe) explained to me a much better model for explaining how schools of fish reduced the risk of being eaten. Rather than looking at it from the perspective of the prey, look at it from the perspective of the predator.<\/p>\n

\nImagine you are a predator chasing solitary prey fish. Every day, you find one fish and you eat it. That gives you enough energy for another 24 hours, which is how long it takes until you find another solitary fish.<\/p>\n

Now imagine you are a predator chasing prey fish that swim in schools. On the first day you find a school of fish, and eat one. Your stomach is full, and you have enough energy for another day. However, the fish are clumped together in groups of 100, so it likely to be another 100 days before you come across another school. You starve.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, you could grow a huge stomach that fits 100 fish, but that has a huge cost.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, having prey fish swim in schools makes it more difficult for predator fish to survive between feeds.<\/p>\n

The same logic applies to plague insects, most ungulates<\/a>, and, I argue, cable television shows.<\/p>\n

So far, my argument has been cogent and smooth. The next part gets bumpy. Strap yourself in.<\/div>\n

My experience with cable TV channels was that they mainly had crap on. Often they would have marathons, where they would show nothing but the same crap TV series for 24 hours straight.<\/p>\n

Every now and again, they randomly have show that I would like… and they would put it on as a 24 hour marathon.<\/p>\n

24 hours is more than anyone can reasonably sit through. It is more than most recording equipment can handle. Either you don’t like the show, or you can’t possibly watch it all. It is guaranteed to minimise the number of viewers.<\/p>\n

I see a direct analogy here with the schools of fish. The show is the prey fish. The viewer who likes the show is the predator.<\/p>\n

The only thing missing here is the question of why the cable channels would want to try to starve the viewer of the shows they like. That has me stumped. Any ideas?<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I no longer have cable television. This is one of the reasons.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do cable TV programmers behave like fish?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,27],"tags":[370,79],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-observation","category-thoughts-from-the-shower","tag-observation","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}