Media-research group Integrated Media Management Inc., which tracks viewership of media on TV and mobile devices, sent a study on the audience for Tina Fey's impressions of Sarah Palin. First, the TV-wonk news, which contends that most of the audience did not watch the skits on live TV:

Among all the people who saw at least one of the three SNL sketches, 33 percent watched it on television during the original broadcast and a staggering 67 percent watched after the original broadcast either online or on a DVR.

But this nugget was even more interesting:

As an interesting side-note, SNL's version of the vice-presidential debate was as close as many viewers came to watching the real thing. Of the viewers who watched at least one of the SNL sketches, 56 percent never saw the actual vice-presidential debate.

Emphasis mine. Also: !!! [Strikes forehead with heel of hand.]

I don't know the margin of error in IMMI's study, so take it with as much salt as you like, but this does go to the notion that Fey is shaping Palin's public image as much as Palin is.

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, watch Cookie Monster Sings "Chocolate Rain" on YouTube, then watch last night's The Office.

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QUBO

NBC has signed a deal to bring one of the most awesome preschooler's cartoons ever, Maisy, to its Qubo kids' cartoons block in November.

For those of you who don't have Noggin, where it previously aired (or don't have kids), this British cartoon based on the work of Lucy Cousins is an island of whimsical quiet in a sea of audiovisual noise. Maisy the mouse, her very close friend Talullah the chicken, squirrel Cyril and crocodile Charlie have adventures, and snacks, set to a gentle ska soundtrack and no dialogue. (Though I can do a great imitation of the Wookiee-like noise Charlie makes.) It was one of the first shows the Tuned In Jrs. watched, and a welcome break for a new dad entranced by the simple, primary-color animation.

And who can ever forget the very special episode where Cyril wet himself in the sandbox? Life lessons were learned, friends, life lessons were learned.

Why do it? What will he air in that half hour? A few half-baked theories, from a political non-expert:

* A massive pretaped ad—along the line of The Man from Hope—to try to close the deal / familiarize himself to last-minute deciders

* Allows him the possibility of a Jeremiah Wright-type live speech to address [William Ayers, negative campaign charge yet to be determined... or Jeremiah Wright yet again]

* Assuming the country is still in financial crisis, allows the possibility of a fireside-chat-style address—to lay out plans, soother nerves, establish self as calming leader, hence sealing the deal, etc.

* More broadly, a speech—any speech—because recent history (Berlin, Wright, the DNC) shows that whenever he gives a major speech, focused on by the mass media, his numbers bounce up

* Just to show he can. Seriously. Much of the media talk about the airtime buy has been what it says about Obama's (apparently) massive fundraising advantages, which feeds into a media narrative of inevitability. (Note to campaign: place call to Hillary Clinton, re possible drawbacks to media narrative of inevitability.)

Better theories?

In the current TIME, my column is about a favorite topic at Tuned In these past couple weeks: Tina Fey's Sarah Palin character, and its advantages and disadvantages for the real Palin.

Obviously, there have been scads of political impressions at SNL over the decades. What distinguishes this one is (1) the fact that Palin was almost entirely unknown, meaning that Fey (and others) were shaping her public image from scratch at the same time as her campaign was, and (2) the extent to which Fey's sketches—especially the Couric interview—relied on Palin's own words, blurring the distinction between quotation and fiction in them. The more you blur these lines, the more you blur the distinction between yourself and the person you are parodying in the public mind:

In an era glutted with satire--The Colbert Report, the Onion, JibJab--there is still a special power to an old-fashioned SNL impersonation. It's shamanistic; it's like owning a voodoo doll: capture your target's soul, and you can make her dance just by waving your arms.

A Google search, for instance, turns up plenty of blog references to Palin's claim that she could see Russia "from [her] house" as her way of saying that being governor of Alaska is a foreign policy credential. The only problem: Real Sarah Palin never said it. Fey did, spoofing Palin's argument that one can see Russia from Alaskan territory. But who can remember those details? If Real You gets in an argument with Public You, Public You wins every time.

I doubt that Fey is directly driving votes to or from McCain-Palin, and as I say, Sarah Palin the actual person has had a little something to do with it as well. But to the extent that the quick-sketch image of a politician matters—and how can it not?—Fey's had a bigger effect than usual.

So we've pretty much established that nobody's watching anything this season. New shows are middling at best in the ratings, relaunched shows like Chuck and ABC's Wednesday have cratered—even hits like House and Grey's are not doing so hot.

OK, part of this is demographic, social and technological. 500 channels, time-shifting, blah blah blah. There are just more, and smaller audiences now. That's not gonna change. And yet 70 million people watched Joe Biden and Sarah Palin for 90 minutes—proving there is an audience still out there if you give people something they want to watch.

The conclusion? After the writers' strike, viewers didn't want a "do-over." They wanted a clean slate. They wanted to forget most of what they were watching before and see something brand-new, that would remind them why they missed TV. They still want brand new. And it looks like they will end this season still waiting for brand-new.

So what is the next next thing?

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NBC Photo: Dana Edelson

Last night, I watched the Weekend Update Thursday edition of Saturday Night Live, immediately after watching The Office (on DVD) and The Daily Show (on Tivo). Woo boy, was that a mistake. I have come to realize the main advantage of putting Saturday Night Live on Saturday night: it does not have to come on the air immediately after something much, much funnier. Unless you count the waterskiing-squirrel segment on your local NBC news.

It began with a debate skit that managed to be, despite a Bill Murray cameo, even more boring than the actual debate. The main running joke: Tom Brokaw was a hardass about the time limits! Oh, snap! Dangerous political satire is back!

[Update: Seriously, if you have a little time on your hands, compare the sketch with the Wednesday-night post-debate riff on The Daily Show. Just for one example, where SNL got in a decent sight gag about McCain's weird wandering about the stage, TDS asked what McCain was up to, giving him a bizarrely hilarious monologue about looking for his tiny dog, "Mr. Puddles."]

The rest of the half hour was filled with Amy Poehler and Seth Myers at the Weekend Update desk. I felt more sorry for them than anything. NBC announced these Thursday specials back at the upfronts, as a way of wringing a little more money out of a show whose budget it had already throttled, and the way they settled on doing it was to do an extra, extended Weekend Update with a skit in front of it. Several of the bits—the news commentary "Oh, Really!?!", Kenan Thompson as an economist who kept yelling "FIX IT!" and an excruciating Hall and Oates duet with Fred Armisen and Bill Hader Will Forte—were more like watching an intentionally bad skit from 30 Rock, or an unintentionally bad one from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

It's a shame, because it's not like SNL lacks for on-air talent, but given what they had to work with, I am confirmed in my decision to watch SNL only in YouTube form. FIX IT!

Barack Obama has finished a deal to air his half-hour campaign pitch on NBC as well Oct. 29, James Hibberd reports. In the process, he will do what Pushing Daisies could not: knock Knight Rider off the air.

Hibberd further wonders whether other networks will air Obama's spot for free, as news coverage, given public interest in the election and lack of interest in pretty much everything else the networks have put on this fall. One question would be how non-paid coverage of the spot would fall under equal-time rules. For the paid spots, the networks are obligated to offer John McCain similar time and prices, but it's unclear whether the McCain campaign would be interested or could afford the unspecified price tag.

I say, let's take it further: if no one is watching fall TV shows to begin with, let's make it into a sitcom! There's already a cast: his crazy, gaffe-making business partner; the cranky old guy next door; and the folksy, wise-cracking hockey mom. It sells itself!

Anyone have a title for it? "Oh, 'Bama!"? "According to Barack"?