Dr. Cat is one of the lesser-known pioneers of the industry. He launched Furcadia, an MMO which went live before UO, and which has been tidily profitable for quite some time. A social game that caters to a unique audience, Furcadia has none of the grind-y elements of today’s EQ clones, and it has offered some unique lessons to those running the game. One of the things the esteemed Doctor said he’s learned from his experience running Furcadia is “Attention is the currency of the future“. As it turns out, that’s not just true for MMOs.

Television has long simply used the Nielson Ratings to determine the popularity of television shows, and set advertising prices. But now, television executives are discovering that not all viewers are created equal, and this discovery has the potential to transform the entertainment industry.

[E]xecutives increasingly are talking about “attentiveness” — how engaged a person is in a particular program, and therefore how aware they are likely to be of the commercials and product placements that appear during one. The goal: to reach viewers who recall advertised products rather than those who are inattentive couch potatoes.

When people watch NBC’s medical sitcom “Scrubs,” for instance, they pay more attention than when they watch “60 Minutes” on CBS, according to a new kind of research. If such a metric becomes an accepted way of evaluating audiences, it could transform the way advertisers buy TV time.

This, of course, makes perfect sense. I watch more TV than I should, but most of the time, it’s just background noise while I work on the blog or do other things. But when certain shows come on, I walk away from the computer and give the television my full attention. Scrubs is one of the shows – it’s got so many callbacks, flashbacks and fantasy sequences that if you stop paying attention, you’ll be completely lost.

This is good news for those who like intelligent programming. It’s probably very bad news for programming which is typically background noise in an office or living room (such as the various cable news channels in general). Of course, this newfound reality has to deal with the other newfound reality that TiVo is scaring the hell out of the networks.

What does this have to do with MMOs? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps just the notion that some customers are inherently worth more than others. There’s a lesson in here somewhere, which I’d be sure to dig out if it wasn’t such a beautiful day outside.