Broadcast Networks Ratings Thread

[rockymtnhigh]

ok so i need to ask another stupid question.

Where do they get the numbers from ? is it based on a phone interview or do identified people send in results each day or something else.
I guess im trying to get to how they profile the votes/estimates. Or is it something else entirely.

Cos frankly i or my wife watch almost none, except csi of any of the top 3's.

This is not as easy to explain as I wish it was. But here is the
Nielsen Website's resource page

and I will also try to explain.

A lot of this is done through the "Nielsen meter" or the box that "Nielsen families" have connected to to their tv. People are randomly selected to be a "Nielsen family" and it records what stations the tv is tuned to, and uploaded to a data center.

They also do "diaries" (I did this once for them about 10 years ago), where you record on paper what you watched, and submit it to them.



Needless to say, the technology that they use is pretty sophisticated, and it takes advantage of the both scientific opinion polling-like techniques to get as accurate a sample as they can get. That is not to say that the process is not controversial and that it does not have its critics; the website I referenced a few post's back talks about some of that).

But regardless of whether they are flawed or not, the ratings they use determine what we get to watch, because they help set advertising rates, which determines revenues, which determines what shows live and what shows die.

I often look at the top 20 shows and laugh that many of my favorite shows aren't even in the top 20. Hope this helps - it was just a quick attempt to answer your very good question.

[rockymtnhigh]

Yea, I was wondering that too. I remember hearing of "Neilson Boxes" thatg worked off a phone line and basicly phoned home every night but I have never seen one or known anyone with one! Now you have Tivos that send in viewing habits and such I just have no idea how they average it all!


Mike

I am not certain how the tivo/dvr issue impacts it. I know that when I did the diary all those year's ago, much of what I watched was on VHS, that earlier form of time-shifting and it was hard to record what I was watching.

[rockymtnhigh]

More from Nielsen Media Research on the box...

Television networks, stations, and third-party data providers give us information on program lineups, telling us what aired on each channel. This essential reference data helps us turn the raw tuning and viewing data into meaningful numbers for reporting.

To comprehend the dimension of our task, let's look at the numbers. We collect information from approximately 25,000 metered households starting at about 3 a.m. each day, process approximately 10 million viewing minutes a day, and make more than 4,000 gigabytes of data available for customer access the next day. In addition, we collect and process data from 1.6 million handwritten paper diaries from households across the country during sweep periods.

[rockymtnhigh]

Mostly re-runs on the broadcast nets, (so an abberviated report).. yet ABC still beat the World Series with Dancing with the Stars (13.0/20) in the overall ratings.

8pm
#1 Dancing with the Stars, 13.0/20
#2 Fox World Series, 7.7/12
#3 NCIS on CBS
#4 Friday Night Lights, on NBC 4.0/6

9pm
#1 Dancing with the Stars conclusion, 14.7/22
#2 baseball

10pm
#1 FOX - Baseball

[BlackHitachi]

Friday Night Lights will be on monday this week after Heroes.

[rockymtnhigh]

Friday Night Lights will be on monday this week after Heroes.

Yup... reported that here but that is a one night thing. It returns on Tuesday to its normal time.

I am guessing that given the Monday ratings (Broadcast Networks Ratings Thread) that it is not going to do much to help the show. Monday already has some strong shows -- and heck, since FNL could not attract an audience on Tuesday when there was little new ones, all it can do is hope that the Heroes audience will stick around.

[rockymtnhigh]

Summarized from Zap2it:

A close battle between ABC and CBS; World Series was rained out. ABC continues to pull out the close win with 9.6/15 compared with CBS’ 9.5/15.

8pm
#1 Dancing with the Stars, 13.2/21
#2 Jericho, 6.8/11
#3 CW ties with NBC 30 Rock/Twenty Good Years

9pm
#1 Criminal Minds, 10.8/16
#2 Lost, 10.3/15 (advantage in the 18-49 year group)
#3 NBC - The Big Loser, 5.1/8

10pm
#1 CSI: NY," 10.9/18
#2 Dateline, 6.0/10
#3 The Nine, 5.2/8

[gbjbany]

ok so now im confused again west coast criminal minds is on before lost. so they arent competing here. plus with my dvr i watch them both Another couple of anomlies in the rating numbers.
Oh well, glad someone is making money off of incomplete data.

[rockymtnhigh]

ok so now im confused again west coast criminal minds is on before lost. so they arent competing here. plus with my dvr i watch them both Another couple of anomlies in the rating numbers.
Oh well, glad someone is making money off of incomplete data.

I am reporting east coast times, which is what I get from the feed I am following.

In the Mountain zone, 8eastern, 7central/mtn was Jericho; then Criminal minds was at 8pm, the same time as Lost. The data is correct.

I am not sure what the deal is on the west coast; I though West Coast has a three hour time delayed East coast schedule, i.e, prime time starts at 8pm, going to 11am; for us int he mtn and central zones it is a more reasonable 7 - 10pm.

[Bobby]

ok so now im confused again west coast criminal minds is on before lost. so they arent competing here. plus with my dvr i watch them both Another couple of anomlies in the rating numbers.
Oh well, glad someone is making money off of incomplete data.

Sacramento, not the whole West Coast has Criminal Minds on at 8PM. Just about everywhere else it's on opposite Lost at 9PM.