TV Ratings

[skatingfantasy]

I was watching Inside Edition tonight and Debra Norville mentioned that 28 million viewers tuned in to see My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance. She got me wondering how do they know how many people watch certain shows? I mean how do they calculate it? Do the cable companies have a way of adding it all up? And then, what if you tune into the show but only watch 5 min of it and then turn something else on. Does that count? Yes I must be bored to death tonight to be talking about tv ratings right?

 

[Rixis]

You know, I've always thought about it too. How often during the show do they test it? I have know idea though. Homework assignment for the night!

 

[icenut84]

I don't know if you Americans use the same system as us in Britain, but for us, (I think) a few thousand people in the population have some kind of black box on their TV that is used for ratings, the idea being that those people are representative of the population. So if a quarter of the people with those boxes watched a certain programme, then the ratings would show a quarter of the population watched it. I think that's how they do it, anyway. As for changing channels, I'm not sure, but I've read things re: ratings that talk about the "peak" number of people that tuned in, which I assume means the most number of people that tuned in during the show (whatever point during the show that might have been).

 

[Kara Bear]

Yah, I think thats how its done.

I once volunteered to do it. I thought it would be neat. But I moved before we could get it started.

 

[Grgranny]

There is also this outfit that sends you some tablets to list all the shows you watch. They sent me one once but I had to return it as it turned out I couldn't be home then. I think I had filled some out years ago.

 

[Skate Sandee]

In the U.S., Nielsen is used. They sample a cross-section of about 5,000 U.S. households to create the estimates the networks use. Nielsen installs special metering equipment on the TV sets of a small set of participating households; this viewer data is transferred directly to Nielsen's computers.

According to what I read, that while a sample of 5,000 households may seem tiny for the purpose of calculating who's watching what, Nielsen's examples demonstrate a four-percent margin of error.

 

[guinevere]

I got to participate in a TV Diary-for-a-week thing last month. It wasn't Nielsen, but I had to write down everything I watched. It was fun!! I have to admit to one little white lie though: I wrote that I watched Arrested Development, even though I was sick and didn't watch TV that night, because I wanted The Powers That Be to know that people do watch that show, because I'm afraid it will be cancelled (and I usually do watch it).

guinevere