I’m not sure this belongs here, but it is a general question, so here goes (mods, feel free to move this if you think it belongs elsewhere):
What’s the deal with “Sweeps” weeks? I understand that for some reason, networks use the ‘sweeps’ period to set advertising rates, and therefore work hard to air their best shows during this period or something. But my questions are:
Isn’t this somewhat silly? Statistically skewing the ratings during this period doesn’t make much sense, if the purpose is to get a true picture of who is watching what.
Wouldn’t advertisers get hip to this? Why would they pay a rate based on ratings that aren’t sustainable? In extreme cases, it seems that it’s completely rigged. For instance, Fox removed Firefly from the air for the last two weeks so they could air Happy Gilmore during ‘sweeps’ to raise their viewership. Now, if I’m an advertiser, showing me your good ratings for Happy Gilmore isn’t going to do squat to convince me to advertise on “Firefly”. Or is the idea to draw viewers away from the OTHER networks and lower their ratings?
Why have sweeps at all? Is it too expensive to simply capture accumulated ratings during the year, and then sell your advertising based on them?
Basically, it seems to me that the need that drives all of this is to give the most accurate accounting of your viewership to your advertisers. Sweeps seem counter-productive to this goal.
I guess this could digress into a general question about Nielsen ratings in general. How many Nielson boxes are there? Are the families selected truly at random? Do they have statistical analysists making sure that their sampling system isn’t biased?
In the real world, I would expect that Nielson would have its reputation dependent on the statistical accuracy of its ratings surveys. But this is Hollywood we are talking about, and as everyone knows, those people are all insane. (-:
The purpose is not to get a true picture pof who is watching what, it’s to inflate the ratings numbers as much as possible during that time, because that is when advertising rates will be set. The more people who watch during sweeps, the more money you get.
A little of both. The truth is everyone pretty much knows how flawed the TV ratings system is statistically, but there’s no other measurement to go by.
Mostly. The ratings are collected by Nielson Media Research. During sweeps, Neilson collects viewing data from the thousands of Nielson boxes hooked up to TV sets which record what is being watched. The sample collected during sweeps is used to extrapolate viewing habits for the rest of the season.
Your answer, while informative, didn’t really answer the question. Let me restate it:
The current Nielson/Sweeps method of rating television programs and setting ad rates seems to be bizarre and inaccurate. I understand that TV studios would want to boost their ratings during some arbitrary special period of time when decisions are made.
But why do advertisers go along with this? Why haven’t TV networks competed with each other to provide better, more accurate ratings systems in an attempt to attract advertisers?
Or perhaps I’m missing something, and the current way of doing things IS very accurate. But if it is, I don’t understand how.
Which begs the question, why not? I can’t see anything intrinsically difficult in using other statistical sampling methods to determine which shows are being watched.
Have any ratings companies other than Nielson ever had a foothold in the market? Has Nielson itself tried different ways of measuring ratings?
It’s doesn’t beg the question, it raises the question.
In any case, the answer is simply, that’s the way they do it.
It would be too expensive for the Networks to set up their own rating branch, not to mention the fact that the advertisers wouldn’t trust its results.
Advertisers have to go with it. The networks set their rates based on the numbers; advertisers either take them or leave them.
However, it’s a fair assumption that, if a show was rated near the top during the sweeps period, it will also be among the top year-round. (Check the weekly ratings – it doesn’t fluctuate all that much throughout the year, aside from specials.) It doesn’t matter if the “The Prisioner” is #1 that week or #6 – advertisers happily pay for something in that area.
Except that as with the Firefly example, often they don’t even air the shows the advertisers are paying to advertise on. During the Sweeps period just ending, FOX pulled Firefly from the air and put a couple of movies in its place, in order to raise the numbers.
This not only had the effect of completely distorting the viewership of the show, but it probably lowered the show’s actual ratings. Pre-empting shows tends to do that.
If I were an advertiser, and someone came to me and said, "We want XXX thousands of dollars per minute on Firefly, and the reason is because *Happy Gilmore[/more] drew a 4.8, I’d say “Come back to me when you have some numbers showing me how many people are watching the show I’m actually paying for.”
And I don’t buy the, “Because that’s the way they do it” angle - unless there is collusion between networks to force competition out, and/or there’s some structural reason why only one ratings system can exist. Competitive markets drive companies to provide services that best match the need being served. Unless Nielson is at the pinnacle of data-gathering capability, it doesn’t make sense to me.
There was an earlier thread on this topic, where the concensus, if I remember correctly, is that while sweeps used to be very important for collecting ratings information, nowadays with constant polling most advertisers are not longer especially interested in the sweeps ratings. Thus, it now is mostly used for bragging rights between the various networks.