How do television ratings (number of veiwers) work?

[vi edit]

Anyone know how television stations can come back the morning after the superbowl or the opening night of a new series and say that "133 million viewers tuned in" that evening? And, how can they even get as specific as saying that 30 million tuned in for the first half, but then dropped to 15 million for the second half?

Do they have a magic 8 ball that tells them these numbers? Can television stations monitor how many people are tuning in to the show? Do the television stations have some sort of poll that they do to take a population sample and then come up with a number?

Anyone have some insight on this. I'm clueless

 

[viewton]

pretty sure they estimate it based upon the number of nelson viewers - people that have boxes in their house that tells the companies what they are watching. maybe .01-.1% have boxes - guessing on that - then they just multiply by 1000 or 10000

 

[GoldenBear]

This should give a good intro:

http://www.epinions.com/kifm-review-249A-74FF422-39779500-prod4

And some terminology..

Overnight ratings: ratings you'll find early the next morning after, and are limited to the broadcast networks. They only measure the top 50 markets in America, while the numbers that come out later measure all the measured markets.

Share: Percentage of people watching that show at the given time. For example if a show receives a 10 share, then 10% of the people watching Tv at the time were watching it.

Rating: Each rating point for broadcast is about 1 million viewers, while a cable rating point is about 700,000 people. If a show does a 3.5 on a broadcast network, then approximately 3.5 million people saw it. However if the same amount of people saw it on a cable station, it would get a 5.0.

 

[Viper GTS]

TV Ratings 101

God I love that site.

Viper GTS

 

[vi edit]

Thanks for the links guys. You know what's really sad? 5,000 people who represent 250+ million. I fail to see how that is even remotely accurate.

I find it sad that companies pay millions of dollars for adds based upon what these 5,000 people watch.

 

[tontod]

Yeah, I still dont see how those numbers can be accurate. What about people who flip channels? If I watch something for 10 min, watch something else, watch the show again for 5 min. then turn it off, does it count as the show being watched?

 

[trmiv]

We did the Neilson family thing once, not with the box though. We had these TV logs and surveys we had to fill out for a week about our viewing habits for that week.

 

[JohnnyKnoxville]

Whats even more sad is that incredibly lame shows like Dawsons Creek are still on the air.

 

[Viper GTS]

My family's log wouldn't be very interesting, Our TV rarely sees use.

Viper GTS

 

[vi edit]

Viper same here.

Here would be my TV log

Monday: nothing
Tuesday: nothing
Wednesday: nothing
Thursday: nothing
Friday: nothing
Saturday: nothing
Sunday: 11:00AM-12:00 PM - Battle Dome

Repeat

 

[Viper GTS]

I don't even remember the last time I seriously watched something on TV. I know I had the TV on New Years' Eve (but I had Sarah with me so I wasn't really watching much of it ), but since then I've probably watched less than 2 hours of TV. Movies are another story, though, there's a reason I have a 27" Wega sitting on my desk.



Viper GTS