WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Don't get nervous, I'm talking about television...

This was the first decent weekend in Newmarket, Canada's "Venice of the North" about a half hour from the center of the universe.

It was also "Yard Sale Saturday" in my neighborhood, meaning all the residents I hadn't seen for snow drifts all winter were making their first appearance while simultaneously trying to empty their basement into somebody else's garage.

In addition to catching up with the locals I traditionally use this weekend to conduct my own straw poll on who's watching what TV shows.

Coincidentally, the May 24 weekend here, Memorial day in the USA, is the official end of May Sweeps and the previous TV season and also the date when our television networks take credit for past triumphs and roll out the PR for next season's offerings.

So you know the marketing machine has already been spewing all the "winners and losers", "best ofs" and "soon to be a hits". Stats I know all my frozen at home neighbors have been following with eager interest.


Only -- they haven't.

Okay, so my straw poll only had a sample group of 25 families on a couple of adjoining streets, some of whom don't speak much English, so it doesn't represent the full demographic spectrum of the nation.

But they range in occupation from construction workers to teachers and chemical engineers and stay-at-home moms. Some drive pick-ups and a few roll in a BMW or a Lexus. The youngest respondants were in their teens and the oldest was 82.

Who says Neilsen is not my middle name?

But I have a feeling their answers to my TV questions might be reflective of the bigger picture. And that possibility has me a little worried.

Of the 60 - 80 people I spoke with on Saturday, not one, not a single solitary one had a "favorite" show. Nobody had an "Appointment Television" appointment with anything.

Nobody had heard of "Gossip Girl" or that "90210" was coming back. Nor did I see anyone make a note of those titles so they could Google them later.

The lady next door, who I know had a crush on Dr. McDreamy last year, didn't watch much of "Grey's Anatomy" this season. She started to feel she'd seen it all before, skipped a few weeks while she took a cooking class and then found herself flipping channels when McDreamy wasn't in the scene.

The kid who was addicted to "Lost" and "Heroes" felt they started "f**king with" him and spent his evenings on the net instead. He couldn't stop talking about the cool stuff he's doing on "Second Life".

Sure there were people who watched "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" but mostly because "There wasn't anything else on" and even they weren't regulars. One had discovered Patrick O'Brian and was working his way through those volumes. Another had invested money with two African women on Kiva and spent her evenings following their progress.

The Cambodian couple watches DVDs her mother ships over. The Russian brothers have a dish that picks up Hockey and Football from Kazakhstan. The Iranian family buys pirate disks at the Pacific Mall while the High School Download Demon offered me a copy of "Crystal Skull" commenting that it wasn't that good. He meant the movie not the quality of the P2P screener.

Of course some of "the guys" were watching hockey. A few of the women try to catch "Oprah" between soccer mom duties. And the geek who works for the Ontario government is "addicted to Question Period".

But as far as the mainstream goes, I could count the number of times somebody mentioned "House" or "30 Rock" or "CSI" on one hand -- for all three combined.

Now, I understand that because people know I'm in the business, they might have felt they should answer with something that "defined" their personality. But I honestly got the feeling that those Plasma screens in their living rooms and dens were being turned on less often -- and most likely to watch something picked up at Blockbuster.

What became really troubling was when I asked about Canadian shows. One guy had seen "Corner Gas" a couple of times and a pair of teenagers had the first seasons of "Trailer Park Boys" on DVD. That was it.

Honest.

If you'll recall, last weekend saw CBC's Hockey version of "Test the Nation" duking it out with the CTV movie "Elijah" for local viewers. Not one person was aware of either of them. This was interesting since the ads for the former run almost non-stop on CBC and ads for the latter -- okay, I didn't see any on CTV either...

More importantly, none of my poll participants had any interest in watching them once I told them what they were.

Now for the kicker --

I mentioned the recent CRTC hearings and the possibility that they may soon be paying $5 or $6 more for their Canadian channels. Most were unaware of that. But the answer was unanimous. "No, I won't!"

Some insisted they'd cancel their cable subscriptions and others suspected they'd just drop that second receiver in the bedroom or cut a program bundle or two.

But they're not going to pay more and more for programming they are already watching less and less.

When the talk turned from television to what was really on their minds it was what you would expect, rising gas prices, higher food costs and the prediction they'd be paying a lot more to heat their homes come next winter.

No matter their incomes, these people are feeling squeezed. The marketing concept that they can always be milked for a few more drops appears to be losing its presience.

For those of us involved in creating the coming season and dissecting the entrails of the network offerings, it would seem we need to begin discussing something far more important.

Why doesn't our audience care anymore -- and how do we get them back?