February 5-9, 2007

[Pine Charles]

Yeah, I think that's how it goes.

And 1 point = 1,102,000 viewers (I think).

[Angela]

Not really. This goes back to the daily rating. Each daily rating is added together (then divided by the typical 5 episodes) to make the weekly household rating for a show - but it's not added together like 2.4 + 2.6 + 2.5, it's added together more like 2.44 + 2.64 + 2.54 (maybe even 2.441 + 2.643).

Again the daily rating is put together by the percentage of households with TV's on at the time a program airs. You have to add in the fact that we have different time zones, different airing times, there's basically a different amount of viewers watching at any one time (how they go into deciphering the math with those factors added in is a mystery to me). That's why sometimes one 2.8 can be 3,800,000 and another 2.8 can be just 3,450,000. At whatever time 3.8 million people were watching there was a larger audience with their TV's on (then there was when 3.45 million equaled 2.8 percent of the viewing audience) thus the 250,000 extra viewers didn't register a higher rating.

[Ilovemydays]

The numbers that you are describing reflect how many TVs are on at the time a show is being viewed and they are not 'Ratings' they are the SHARES

Ratings are percentages NOT flat numbers. A 1.0 household rating equals 1% of all households in the U.S.

Example:

"My Name Is Earl" (households: 4.4/8, #9; adults 18-49: 2.7, #T4)

4.4 = "Earl's" household rating, which indicates 4.4% of all households in the U.S. watched this broadcast

8 = "Earl's" household share, which indicates 8% of all households watching TV in the U.S. watched this broadcast

#9 = "Earl's" household ranking for that night (T denotes a tie)

2.7 = "Earl's" adults 18-49 rating, which indicates 2.7% of all adults 18-49 in the U.S. watched this broadcast

#T4 = "Earl's" adults 18-49 ranking for that night (T denotes a tie)

If a single national ratings point represents 1%, or 1,102,000 households for the 2006-07 season I don't get the sharp disparity in the Ratings numbers that between AMC and DAYS/ATWT. Even if AMC is a low 2.8 and DAYS/ATWT are at a high 2.5 the numbers still seem wrong.

[WTGH]

On Thursday, when Chelsea went to see Hope the baby cried. Closed Captioning read [CIARA CRIES]. The name's been acknowledged but it hasn't been said--yet.

[SteveFrame]

Here are some links to some good articles on ratings. They should help to clear up some of the confusion - hopefully.

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question433.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Ratings

Here is a whole site section devoted to TV ratings:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?pa...elsenmedia.com/

esp. click on the section Inside TV Ratings

I know that a lot of you are still getting "Share" and the "HH" number mixed up. Wikipedia explains it best. If you will notice the highlighted section, the first number in the ratings represents not the share of households but the percentage of households - the 2nd number is the Share number.

Each point in the ratings HH does not represent just a percentage but it represents 1,102,000 households tuned in at that time. The second number represents the percentage of total households turned on in America to that one particular program.

So say Y&R rating of 4.6/15. That means that Nielsen estimated that 5,069,200 households had their TV tuned into Y&R last week, and that represented 15% of the total audience who had their TV turned on were watching Y&R.

Where the ratings get tricky is right now Nielsen has no way of knowing how many people are actually watching at the time, so they have to estimate the viewers. Plus they have no way of knowing if anyone is actually watching the TV at the time, but as long as the black box sends the signal that the TV is tuned into that station it counts as a click for Y&R or whatever show.

[Ilovemydays]

If a single national ratings point represents 1%, or 1,102,000 households then what is the explaination for the difference between AMC and DAYS? The HH numbers between AMC and DAYS are only 66,000 but the ratings difference is .3 while the difference between DAYS and ATWT is 138,000 and yet they tie at 2.5.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2007

5.(5) AMC: Monday: 2.8/3,415,000

6.(8) DAYS: Monday: 2.5/3,349,000

7.(6) ATWT: Monday: 2.5/3,211,000

[Angela]

Files that into hard disk. So the 2.6 is the amount of "all viewers with TV's" but the /08 is the percent of TV's on that are watching the program.

Okay, but you look at any ratings and it never comes as clean as that example did - i.e. 9.2 * 1,102,000. So is it the 2.862 that influences that or is it the share? This past week, ATWT's Wednesday rating was 2.5 which actually equals 2,755,000 but according to actual data that was equal to 3,336,000. And I'm pretty sure if I did that with the weekly rating I'd get a similiar result.

Ah, Nielsens so overly complicated!

ETA:

Yeah, I mean according to the laws of Nielsen (in these articles) AMC should have had over 300,000 more viewers to acquire that 2.8 and a 2.54 or a 2.75 can't really explain just a 66,000 seperation between a 2.5 and a 2.8, so I guess this is due to share? Looking at the second portion of the article I quoted in this post is it that they add the 2.8 * 1,102,000 (3,085,600) to the share amount of viewers? If so, that seems weird and again so overly complicated.

[Scotty]

This Nielsons rating stuff is too confusing....

I just hope OLTL gains some ground next week.

[SteveFrame]

In the example you show, the first number is the number of households tuned in. The 2nd number is the number of viewers.

Remember that not every household has the same number of people.

Nielsen household #1 might have 6 people who live in that house. Say that TV is tuned in to Days. They only get 1 household count, but might get all 6 viewer counts if only 1 TV is in that house.

Say Nielsen households #2, #3, & #4 all only have 1 person living in them. But all 3 are tuned in to AMC. AMC gets 3 household counts but only 3 viewers counted.

Viewers fluctuate from household to household. And Nielsen has no fail proof way of counting viewers. They can count more accurately the actual households that have the TV tuned in. That is why advertisers still look closely at the HH number because they know for sure they are reaching that household.

So the size of the household tuned in is what determines the viewers and explains why some shows might be closer in vieweres because the households that do tune in might have more people in them. A show that is more popular with a younger audience typically will reach households with more people in them, while a show is that is more popular with older viewers might reach only couple households or even single-dwelling households.

[SteveFrame]

Rugrat, I think I already explained it so you can look at it there. That big number that you were looking at after ATWT does not represent the HH average.

ATWT's 2.5 still equals to 2,755,000 houses. But in those houses (depending on actually how many people lived in them) Nielsen estimated by house size that ATWT had 3,211,000 viewers. That averages to at least one person in each household leaving the other 456,000 viewers to be averaged out over the homes.

I hope that helps.

[ChiTownBoi03]

I have to agree that as a DAYS fan from the late 80s, I personally much prefer the action/adventure/gothic stories of yore. I do think the day-to-day writing has been better, the acting has been better, but I just find myself rather bored. Nowadays, I feel like Y&R and DAYS switched bodies or something. I know it is a minority view, but I think a big stunt/event could be great if it was written properly and/or had other stories to branch from that to sustain interest over a longer period of time. I'm not saying hey, lets have dungeons and flying dragons terrorizing the residents. I'm just holding out for some substantial entertainment value, amidst all the great acting, drama and dialogue. But hey JMO

[Angela]

Yeah it definitely did help, makes a lot more sense now. I feel like I just took a weekend seminar on Nielsens Thanks Steve.

So going over this all in a newly educated sense:

2.7/08

2.7 is the rating. Each rating point is equal to 1,102,000 Households [not to be mistaken with just a single viewer]. Households have varying amount of "viewers" in them [1, 2, 3, 4, 8, etc...] thus that explains how a 2.8 and a 2.5 can only be 66,000 viewers apart.

/08 is the percentage of TV's on at the time of the program that were watching that specific program.

So Steve, even if one person in a household of 5 is watching the show, the show will get all 5 in the viewer count? Interesting. A little skewed, but I think that's good in a way because the way Nielsen gets ratings doesn't seem the most adequate way to go about getting them - they should put "tracking" chips in all cable boxes but that'd probably violate some privacy law or something...

[SteveFrame]

Your welcome Rugrat.

That last part.

First off, it depends. Say a household does have 5 viewers in it. If they have 1 TV in the house, then yes if the TV is on Nielsen counts all 5 as the household size. But let's say that they have 2 TV's and both TV's are on. The way my rep explained it - if both TV's are on they divide it. They give one show 2.5 and the other show 2.5 viewers. If 3 TV's are owned and are on then they divide it accordingly - and so on and so on.

Now for the ones who fill out the diaries instead of the little black boxes or do both - they get a more accurate account. Because if you do the diary, there is a box on there that states how many people are watching at a particular time.

As to the cable boxes I don't think that the Cable people will allow them to put them in the boxes at this point. When we were a Nielsen household, they put boxes or chips in all our TVs, all VCRs/DVDs, and all game systems. That told them if the TV was on to play a game or what, and also let them know what channels were being recorded. I think they do the TiVO's too but we didn't have one. They did not touch our cable box.

It would be nice if they could track every TV but right now they just use the sampling method that most polls do. And I do think they try to do it fair. For instance when I turned 40 last year they came and took all the chips out of our house. They said with my new age that in this area they had too many in that age group, and since I was one of the newer ones they took it out. They said with my age and the age of my daughters in the house now we were too much alike other families in the area in the same age group and needed to get a purer sample. So another think age took away from me.

:lol: :lol:

[Ilovemydays]

1. In your daily ratings breakdown, I always see the following information: "My Name Is Earl" (households: 4.4/8, #9; adults 18-49: 2.7, #T4). What does it mean?

Let's break it down piece by piece. In the example given for "My Name Is Earl," here's what each number signifies:

household rating = 4.4

household share = 8

household rank (for the night) = #9

adults 18-49 rating = 2.7

adults 18-49 rank (for the night) = tied for #4

2. So what does a 4.4 household rating mean?

A 4.4 household rating means that 4.4% of all households (that is to say homes with a TV set) watched this episode of "My Name Is Earl."

For the 2006-07 season, Nielsen Media Research has determined there are an estimated 111,348,110 television households in the U.S. This means that a single national household ratings point represents 1%, or 1,113,481 households.

With the above in mind, a 4.4 household rating equals 4.4% of 111,348,110 million television households or 4,899,317 households.

3. So that's great and all. How do I find out exactly how many people (not just households) watched the show?

Unfortunately, we do not have access to the total viewers numbers on a daily basis.

Also keep in mind, the number of actual total viewers CANNOT be determined from the household rating or household share. Obviously since there is at least one person in a household, the total viewers will be "at least" 4,899,317 people in the above case.

http://www.thefutoncritic.com/ratings.aspx?id=faq

LOL Darcy you might have to email the Nielsen Media Research group to get to the bottom of the discrepancy.

[skiman12082004]

I think the Nielsen's are a joke, but I understand the basic concept of how they tabulate the numbers. With that being said, I'm glad that B&B went up. Not to take anything from Passions, but now that I am all about B&B, it's such a relief seeing the ratings now. I'm happy B&B is firmly in 2nd place in total viewers and going up in the other demo's. Hopefully the trend will continue.