COMCAST SURVEY PRODUCES CURIOUS RESULTS

A survey conducted for cable giant Comcast asking participants which of seven series they were most excited to see return listed The Prisoner among the seven. As Washington Post TV writer Lisa De Moraes observed today (Wednesday), The Prisoner was a 1960s series that starred Patrick McGoohan, who has been dead for more than a year. (An AMC miniseries with the same title aired in 2009.) Many of those surveyed were indeed excited to learn that it’s returning. (It’s not.) DeMoraes also noted that several TV writers glommed onto another part of the survey, conducted for Comcast by International Communications Research, which found that 60 percent of viewers now own digital video recorders. A similar survey by Nielsen Research, she noted, came up with a far more conservative estimate — 40 percent.