Television executives and marketers are always coming up with newfangled research and buzzwords to describe their latest ploy to sell you the same thing: Video marketing on a screen. The newest entrant? "Emotional Bonding Q Scores," which measures an audience's emotional connection to a TV show. But more important than measuring how much viewers love Dexter, it's a way for ad salesmen to say, "Who cares if Lipstick Jungle's ratings are crap? Look how often we get viewers to cry!"

Indeed, this new metrics are always about advertising. How, wonder executives in floor-to-ceiling window offices, do we convince media buyers to pay top dollar for the same garbage?

Now, Emotional Bonding Q Scores paves the way! It's just too bad many of the shows with top Q Scores (where the index average is 100) are on premium networks that don't rely on advertising: Dexter (174 with ladies 18-49), True Blood (157). But there are network offerings too, reports MediaPost: The CW's Privileged, which doesn't have the Nielsen numbers to boast about viewership, has the No. 2 Q Score with 145. Even Prison Break, eeking its way to a painful death, hit 134.

We don't have the scores for all TV shows, but suffice to say Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? didn't even register.