I recall reading somewhere that “nielsen ratings” (the all-important numbers that determine a television show’s popularity) are a direct measure of the number of people watching a given show measured in millions, while a “share” (another ratings term that gets bandied about by tv critics) is the percentage of sets in use at a given moment tuned to a particular show. (For example, if a show on at 8pm gets a “5.2 nielsen and 50 share” means that 5,200,000 people are watching, as well as 50 percent of the televisions in use at that time are tuned into that show.)
Assuming I am correct about that (not certain that I am), my main question is how do they come up with these ratings? How do they determine what how many or what percentage of televisions are tuned to any particular station at any time?
And then how do they measure demographics? You know: “This television show is the most watched by the key demographic group of men aged 19-32” (or whatever)
What’s the point of having both a nielsen rating and a share rating? What does one rating say that the other does not?
And who measures these stats? Is “nielsen” the name of a company who does these sorts of calculations? (I can’t imagine the networks could be trusted to produce their own ratings.)
I hate to sound paranoid, but when I got to thinking about these things the other day, it seemed almost Orwellian. How are these mysterious unknown people determining just what I (and the rest of the U.S.) watch and don’t watch?
Nielsen Media Research is indeed the name of the company that conducts television ratings research.
A rating is the percentage of the total population of aroun 95 million TV households (TVHH) earned by a program. It’s useful insofar as it provides, collectively, a picture of how many people are watching television each night.
A share is the percentage of sets in use (households using television, or HUTs) earned by a given program. Its usefulness is obvious–out of all the TVs actually turned on, how many are watching program X?
Ratings and shares are measured via the use of set-top boxes. There are around 4,000 or so out there. They can tell whether your television is on or off, what channel it is tuned to, whether your VCR is on and whether you are watching a tape, and what channel your cable box is tuned to. Each morning, the set-top boxes call into the Nielsen center in Florida for overnight ratings measurement.
Additional measuring devices, including people meters and diaries, are used during the sweeps periods and in some markets. People meters have a code for each person in the household to enter when they are watching; diaries require the same information to be written in. Demographic measurements are derived in this matter, since the Nielsen folks know the demographic makeup of the households to which they have assigned boxes, meters and diaries.
All Nielsen households are contacted by the company and asked to volunteer. If they do, they are given a token payment for their work.
Radio ratings are measured in similar ways by Arbitron.
I’ve been a Neilsen family, and it’s rather interesting.
We didn’t get the box; we were participating in a special survey in our market. A log showed up in the mail, and we were supposed to keep track of all the shows we watched over a two-week period. At the end of the two-week period, we mailed the log back in. We got two bucks to participate.
Our family participated in the Neilson Ratings some time ago as well. We had the same booklet that msrobyn had. I’m convinced that these booklets are none too accurate. If you have the box, it relays what you are actually watching. If you got the booklet, you can make up as much stuff as you want. I can remember filling it out and thinking to myself, "I don’t want to admit that I was watching Three’s Company reruns, I think I’ll put down Masterpiece Theatre.
It’s important to know both. For example, if you know that your show was watched by 60,000,000 people (the number is extrapolated per the method above) and has a share of 60%, then you know that 40%, or 40,000,000 people were watching something else. This is important, since different numbers of people are watching television at different times.
Ratings are important because the more people who are watching, the more valuable your advertising space is.