Broadcast Networks Ratings Thread

[rockymtnhigh]

I thought I would take the initiative and create a thread to record daily broadcast network ratings. Since we know that those blasted ratings determine whether or not our favorite shows last, it provides good information. Sean has been providing a lot of this info for the first part of the season, but he has been strangely absent from the board for a few weeks (I do hope he is on some extended cruise or vacation somewhere warm and return to us soon! ) So, I figured I would try to pick up the slack for a bit....

Let me know if you find this stuff useful. With that, here are Thursday's ratings:

Ratings for Thursday October 19
From Zap2it

CBS earned a 10.1 rating/16 share among households for the night, followed closely by ABC, 9.7/15, and FOX, 9.3/14. NBC took fourth with a 6.8/10, and The CW trailed at 2.4/4.

ABC once again won the top spot among adults 18-49 with a 5.8 rating. CBS took second with a 5.4. FOX, 4.5, beat out NBC, 4.1, for third. The CW came in at 1.7.

Specifics:

8pm -- ABC's "Ugly Betty" and CBS' "Survivor: Cook Islands" tied for first in households at 8.9/14

9pm - "Grey's Anatomy," 14.3/21. CBS finished second with "CSI," 12.5/18

10pm - Fox Baseball first; CBS' "Shark" and NBC's "ER" tied for second at 9.0/14, with CBS having slightly more total viewers and NBC ahead in adults 18-49. "Six Degrees" drew a 6.0/10 on ABC.

 

[BlackHitachi]

I like this rating thread like you said always good to know how your favorite shows did. I wish i new how to read them but like them all the same.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I like this rating thread like you said always good to know how your favorite shows did. I wish i new how to read them but like them all the same.

There are guides on how to interpret them; when I have a chance this weekend, I will put up a summary on how to make sense of them; although the most important thing is the bigger the number, the better the show is doing!

As my second-favorite android once said.. "One is glad to be of service!"

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Ok... as is often the case, wikipedia had a decent article explaining what the Nielsen ratings mean.

[WIKI]Nielsen Ratings[/WIKI]

Nielsen Television Ratings are reported by ranking the percentage for each show of all viewers watching television at a given time. As of 2005, there are an estimated 110.2 million television households in the USA. A single national ratings point represents 1%, or 1,102,000 households for the 2005-06 season. Share is the percentage of television sets in use tuned to a specific program. These numbers are usually reported as (ratings points/share). For example, Nielsen may report a show as receiving a 9.2/15 during its broadcast, meaning 9.2%, or 10,138,400 households on average were tuned in at any given moment. Additionally, 15% of all televisions in use at the time were tuned into this program. Nielsen re-estimates the number of households each August for the upcoming television season.

So... using their example 9.2/15....

9.2/15 = %-of-households tuned in / %-of-all televisions in use.

9.2/15 = Household-rating / House-hold share


If you read it a few times, it makes sense. But the simple thing is: the bigger the number, the better.


EDIT: Updated 2006 numbers: 111,348,110 television households in the U.S. so 1% of that equals 1,113,481 households.
There are an estimated 130.6 million adults between the ages of 18 and 49 in the U.S. so 1% of that equals 1.31 million people.

 

[BlackHitachi]

OMG thank you and you are right it is easy!!

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Ratings for Friday, October 20, 2006

From Zap2it

CBS and NBC engaged in a tight ratings race Friday, with CBS narrowly winning the overall battle and NBC taking the adults 18-49 crown.

For the night, CBS averaged a 7.2 rating/13 share, just beating NBC's 7.0/13 (the two networks were by about 100,000 viewers). ABC took third with a 4.4/8. The CW, 2.7/5, topped FOX, 2.4/4, for fourth.

NBC earned a 3.2 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic to edge CBS, which came in at 3.1. None of the other three networks did much, with ABC third at 1.8, followed by The CW, 1.5, and FOX, 1.4.

Specifics:

8pm -- "Deal or No Deal" first for NBC with a 7.0/13. CBS' "Ghost Whisperer" finished second with a 6.7/12.

9pm - CBS' "Close to Home" 7.3/13, NBC's "1 vs. 100," 7.2/13, had more total viewers (11.9 million to 11.15 million). "Men in Trees" 4.4/8 for ABC.

10pm - Numb3rs" first at 7.8/14 for CBS "Law & Order" second at 6.7/12, ABC' 20/20 third at 5.3/10.


PS I need to create a simple table to present this in. Look for it with the next edition on Tuesday... I am only reporting 1-3 rankings; Zap2it's link also includes 4th and 5th (CW and Fox in all three of these examples).

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Sunday, October 22, 2006

(abbreviated... little time today)

Overall: Fox, thanks to World Series and Late-ending NFl games. 10.2 /16

7pm - 1) FOX 9.6/16 sports; 2) CBS - 60 Min. 8.1/14; 3) ABC "America's Funniest Home Videos," 5.5/9.

8pm - Baseball...

9pm - ABC Desperate Housewives 12.4/18


Summarized from Zap2it

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Monday, October 23, 2006

Highlight from Zap2it: “"CSI: Miami" put CBS on top of the overall ratings Monday, but the best showing yet by "Heroes" gave NBC the No. 1 ranking among adults 18-49.

CBS averaged an 8.8 rating/13 share for the evening to beat out NBC's 7.8/12. ABC finished third in households with a 5.0/8, although FOX, 4.7/7, had a small edge in total viewers. The CW earned a 1.9/3.”

8pm #1 nbc: Deal or No Deal," 9.7/15

9pm
#1 cbs: Two and a Half Men/ New Christine, 9.8/14, 8.8/12
# 2 nbc: Heroes, 8.6/12
#3 abc: The bachelor-Rome
#4 FOX: Justice 4.2/8

10pm
#1 CBS – CSI: Miami, 11.4/18
#2 NBC – Studio 60, 5.1/8
#3 ABC – What About Brian, 4.4/7

 

[gbjbany]

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.

 

[mike1973]

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 top3's.

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

 

[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]

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

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 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]

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

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.