Typical. My first comment to a new forum and I'm going to wind up disagreeing with everyone else. Way to begin, Phil! Apologies if this reads as even slightly flame-y, because that's not the intention.
Having said that...
I hated this story. As in, had I not been listening because I had a long queue in the Post Office in which to stand, I would want these 30-ish minutes of my life back, please. And it's sad, 1) because this is the first EP story I've said that for and 2) because Mr Reed's track record as listed in the intro is very impressive.
But let me see if I understand this correctly: a major television network commissions eight episodes of a sloppily-made series based on a few minutes of footage, no press pack and no contact with the creative minds behind it.
Well, this seems to be the one thing you didn't understand correctly - the story made it pretty clear this was not a major network, but a new network trying to establish itself by getting bargain priced shows and hoping that some of them stick.
Is it really credible that an intelligent species that's advanced enough to create network television from across the interstellar void has either skipped the stage of radio transmissions chattering away into the ether or completely masked all their planetary radio output for all that time so we haven't spotted them?
The alien civilization is millions of years old. A physical space-travelling AI, like the one described in the story, would probably be travelling slower than radio waves, and it arrived long before the development of intelligent life on Earth. Probably, the Alien's radio chatter had come long before humans had the power to hear it - and the alien civilization might have survived only several thousands or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years, so it also ended long before humans were capable of detecting it.
As for the rest of what you say - well, it's mostly arguing based on plausibility, and that's been debated here before. Some people put a more stock than others into how plausible a story is, and that's just a matter of taste. If you found this story to be too implausible to get into - well, that's certainly a valid opinion, but it's not something that you should be surprised about when others feel differently from you.
As I said above, I thought this was a good story but far from great. I must say, though, that I never found it implausible - for me, at least, this story was not a case of founding it hard to credit but enjoying it regardless, but I found it perfectly credible as I went along, and even hindsight didn't find too many faults on that side. I don't have any intelligent response to the questions about the audience reaction - it just didn't bother me and that's that, but as for the following point, you touched a minor pet peeve of mine:
Why is this a Hugo nominee?!
Hugo nominees are selected by popular vote. Therefore, it must be the case that this story spoke to enough people who thought it was better than anything else out there this year. You're certainly not one of those people. Nor am I - I don't dislike the story but I feel there were a lot of better selections. Still, it's silly to be surprised that the tastes of others fail to match one's own.
Steve, you've wasted your money this time. 
Clearly not, since a lot of other people here seem to like it, many far more than I have. I doubt Steve's goal is to please all of the people, all of the time, and I'm pretty sure that a story that pleases a large percentage of his audience is considered far from a waste, even if
you were not part of that percentage.
It's always valid to express your opinion, but it's nice to keep some perspective as well - if you start a post by pointing out that you are disagreeing with everyone else, don't end it by claiming that Steve failed to deliver.
