"Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and the dips**s who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way."

"First, the requirement of watching live was, in fact, the greatest impediment to serials in the past. If you missed an episode and couldn't catch a rerun, you were off the train, and it was that much harder to get back on"

They are essentially saying the same fukking thing. So what exactly is the contradiction. Poniewozik is making the same exact point that Kring is making. I can see why he's in disbelief, perhaps because he isn't actually thinking about what he himself is saying. The only difference is that he had time to carefully consider his words, and he still seemed to misunderstand Kring. Only thing that is sillier than that is the fact that most people seem to just go along with it without noticing that Kring is saying pretty much what Poniewozik is saying. Stupid is as stupid does.

"[Serialized storytelling is] a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now, because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming."

This is the crux of the misunderstanding. I believe he is pretty much incorrect about serialized storytelling being a flawed way of telling stories, but he isn't blaming DVR's for this. He is explaining that DVR's have expanded the storytelling capabilities, rather. However, serialized story telling is something that is enhanced by DVR, not relegated to irrelevance for more open story telling methods, so he loses everyone almost immediately with that statement.

"The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air."

Here he is simply explaining part of the theory behind serialized TV, and why DVR disrupts the reasoning behind serialized TV. People didn't want to miss an episode of a serialized show because each episode was important. Now DVR's make it so that they can be recorded and watched at anytime, or people can watch it online if they choose. Again, he isn't blaming DVR's, he is doing the opposite.

"So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and the dips**s who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way."

Here he isn't complaining that DVRs are messing things up for his show because they are a more convenient method of TV watching, he is trying to support DVR's for that exact reason, which is their superiority as the better method of watching television.

Trust me, I'm not a Kring supporter. I feel he has severely mishandled Heroes, is overly defensive about things, and far too interactive about things that will be happening on the show, and I really actually would like someone else to run the show. But almost everyone that is responding to this quote is not looking closely at what he's saying, and they are clearly misunderstanding without even realizing it.

So while he is essentially wrong about serialized storytelling being a flawed way of telling stories, people are mistaking his quote as denigrating Digital Video Recording and blaming DVRs. They are simply reading the first sentence in the quote and making a mistake about what he's really talking about, since that first statement is admittedly illogical. I find it extremely ironic because these are the same people that are offended by him calling them "saps and dipshits". I can understand it if you've lost faith in the guy, and want to crucify his lapse of judgement, but you might want to actually understand what, in his statement, you are criticising him for. Most people here don't seem to. They seem to all be saying something like "Well if he's blaming DVR's for the plight of his show". Well, that's not what he's saying at all, so try reading the quote more carefully.

I absolutely loved the first season of Heroes right up until the finale, which I thought was fairly weak. The finale of the first season seems to be the turning point where they realized the show was a big success and became extremely hesitant to allow the show to change in any major way which lead directly to the way-too-big-cast (Zachary Quinto is a fantastic actor, but I really wish they had the balls to kill Sylar off there and then), the stupid idea that every season's arc has to involve someone seeing the future and it containing a world ending event that must be stopped, etc.

The second season was filled with this same weakness dragged on longer. I hoped this was just due to the writer's strike issues and the third season would get things back on track. No luck. The third season is even worse than the second, IMO. Once again they go to the well of "see the future, see some world ending event, fix it", but on top of that they retconned in so many needless links and relationships between the characters that even post-Prequels George Lucas would blush, they added even more characters to an already way too bloated cast, they completely destroyed any type of consistent characterization by having people shift motivations and allegiences at the drop of a hat, and on and on and on.

I stopped watching the show weeks ago and have given up on it. Every friend I know who was also a big fan (save one) gave up even before I did. Kring, et al, can try to convince themselves that the ratings slump is due to time shifting or whatever, but in my experience in the trenches of a subset of Heroes viewers, they are really bleeding viewers off completely at an alarming rate, and as this article says it isn't because of the show being serial, but rather it is because the show sucks now.

Steps to get me back watching Heroes:

Hire non-comic writers to replace the recently let-go writers. The ideal would be talented writers who are or can become fanboys of the comic genre but without having spent too long a time in the comic book world where soap opera crap like characters who never really die is seen as the status quo. (eg. Bryan Singer, David Hayter, the Nolans... not that you could hire THESE people, but I'd rather see people in their mold than hiring someone who is famous from the comic world).

Keep the serialized format but drop the "big event in future" stories. How about just having some really bad guys that need to be stopped? Preferrably bad guys who don't turn out to be an uncles cousins step-brother of some of the heroes.

Figure out what to do with time travel. Right now the way the show handles anything to do with time travel is arbitrary and stupid. I'm not sure what you can even do with this now short of killing off Hiro and gimping Peter. You should have built some limits into the time travel ability to begin with.

On that note, figure out to do with all the power collectors like Peter and Sylar and now his dad, because again without limits this just gets stupid.

Keep the characters consistent. As silly as the plots from Lost got for a few seasons, the characters themselves always seemed real to me because their characterizations remained consistent regardless of the plot shifts.

I really did love this show for most of a season and I hope they manage to turn it around, but given that their response to the problem seems to be denial and blame shifting, I'm not sure I believe it can happen in time.