Ratings

[Loss]

I still get confused by this stuff. Can someone explain, so we can refer back to it as needed, the following?

 

(1) What does a rating actually represent? If RAW gets a 3.2, does this mean 3.2% of people with televisions were tuned into RAW?

(2) Is the overall rating determined by averaging together all of the quarter hours?

(3) How can Dave say that a segment with a wrestler lost or gained x number of viewers, unless every single segment lasts exactly 15 minutes and starts at the beginning of the quarter hour? If there is a backstage skit with AJ, then Punk comes out for a promo, but people tuned out during AJ's skit, it's not fair to say Punk's promo lost 600,000 viewers or whatever, is it?

(4) What is a share, and how is it different from a rating?

(5) What is "head-to-head", and how does that differ from the rating/share?

 

I have follow-up questions too, regarding things that have never really made sense to me, but answers to these questions will get the ball rolling in the right direction.

[kjh]

(1) It means that 3.2% of homes with access to the USA network tuned into Raw. That's why Showtime can get a 1.0 rating with only a few hundred thousand viewers.

(2) Yes.

(3) There are minute by minute breakdowns, but Meltzer isn't adding up those numbers to get the figures he quotes in the Observer. Bit sloppy.

(4) Quoting Wikipedia: "Share is the percentage of television sets in use tuned to the program."

(5) Never heard that terminology used before.

[Bix]

1. The cable ratings that we commonly see are a percentage taken from homes that have access to the cable network in question and are sometimes referred to as "coverage area ratings." It's how UFC's specials on Fuel can draw a decent-sounding rating with an actual audience of ~200,000 people. Network TV ratings ("household ratings") take into account every home with a TV, which has, at times, led to somewhat misleading ratings on start-up networks if they weren't on in certain markets.

 

2. They have minute by minute information, which is why the quarters don't always average into the hour's rating.

 

3. Dave posted this last week:

 

You know what kills your theories.

 

They change people with boxes constantly, yet for years and years, there are patterns on Raw. The same quarters usually do well, the same points of the show have people tuning out. And the exceptions are usually when segments are really good or the bigger stars are on. And there is a consistency to certain people drawing not only bigger numbers than others, but unique demos.

 

If it was a random system that wasn't accurate, given that the Neilsen people know nothing about wrestling, you'd have random results that wouldn't be predictable. Instead, give or take a little, the stuff seems to measure. Kind of like last night, we all knew it would be a good rating and if it did a 3.0, you'd wonder, but it didn't.

 

And whenever Rock came on the screen, the numbers went up for his duration, but when The Miz came on the screen they didn't. Perhaps it happening was sheer coincidence. But the fact viewers almost always go up when Cena is featured seems like a whole lot of coincidences for something not to have validity.

 

If it's the same 25,000 people, it's one thing. But they switch people all the time, yet the ratings don't switch much or at all when they switch people. And usually the popular guys and the popular positions do the best on almost every show, regardless of homes being switched.

 

If you had wild variations and inconsistencies, it would be one thing.

 

System is far from perfect, but over the course of weeks and patterns, you can learn a ton from it.

 

Or you can just ignore and pretend and have no understanding of basic polling and stats.

 

Plus, at the end of the day, every decision in WWE & TNA is determined to a degree by these patterns. Even if they are useless, using them will help you figure out why people are put in certain positions and why others aren't. And also help you figure out if people do well and don't get pushed, why that's the case as well.

4. A share is based on homes where TV is being watched at the moment.

 

5. Just used in comparison to other shows, IE "the hour that went head to head with the finale of X did a..."

[KrisZ]

Shares are actually more important than the ratings points.

[Loss]

Thanks. So when measuring the success or failure of Raw, isn't it a little unfair to compare ratings points from a year or two years prior? The rating itself doesn't say much. The number of viewers could increase while the rating decreases if the show is now available to a wider audience. I see people making number comparisons to previous years all the time. That's not really the best approach, is it? Shouldn't we be looking instead at the number of viewers? It's what we are evolving to with PPV buys, so it seems like doing the same for TV ratings would make far more sense.

[Bix]

Thanks. So when measuring the success or failure of Raw, isn't it a little unfair to compare ratings points from a year or two years prior?

Yes.

 

I see people making number comparisons to previous years all the time. That's not really the best approach, is it?

No, it's not.

 

Shouldn't we be looking instead at the number of viewers?

Yes.

[jdw]

Thanks. So when measuring the success or failure of Raw, isn't it a little unfair to compare ratings points from a year or two years prior?

Yes.

 

I see people making number comparisons to previous years all the time. That's not really the best approach, is it?

No, it's not.

 

Shouldn't we be looking instead at the number of viewers?

Yes.

 

Is there really that much difference in the number of households that have Raw from year-to-year at this point?

 

I get that more people are watching a 3.1 this year than a 3.1 last year. But is it radical on USA?

 

Also something I mentioned when something like this came up the last time:

 

If the Finale of American Idol draws 1 million more viewers than the Finale of MASH, all that tells us is that 1M more people watched AI. It doesn't tell us how many more people were alive in the US in 2012 than 1982, and what the ratio of viewers was. Because I swear to you that everyone in TV if given the choice of these:

 

1. 1 million more viewers than the average of the MASH Finale (105.9M)

2. the average rating of the MASH Finale (60.2) in an 8:30pm - 11pm time slot

 

100 out of 100 tv folks would rather have #2. Not even close 60 rating is something that TV folks can't even conceive of anymore as the Super Bowl doesn't even get into the 50s.

 

So while there are problems comping July 2012 Raw with July 1999 Salad Days Raw... I actually don't think "viewers" is a great way to make the direct comp.

[NintendoLogic]

Hasn't the number of TV households actually declined the past couple of years?

[Bix]

Thanks. So when measuring the success or failure of Raw, isn't it a little unfair to compare ratings points from a year or two years prior?

Yes.

 

I see people making number comparisons to previous years all the time. That's not really the best approach, is it?

No, it's not.

 

Shouldn't we be looking instead at the number of viewers?

Yes.

 

Is there really that much difference in the number of households that have Raw from year-to-year at this point?

 

I get that more people are watching a 3.1 this year than a 3.1 last year. But is it radical on USA?

 

Also something I mentioned when something like this came up the last time:

 

If the Finale of American Idol draws 1 million more viewers than the Finale of MASH, all that tells us is that 1M more people watched AI. It doesn't tell us how many more people were alive in the US in 2012 than 1982, and what the ratio of viewers was. Because I swear to you that everyone in TV if given the choice of these:

 

1. 1 million more viewers than the average of the MASH Finale (105.9M)

2. the average rating of the MASH Finale (60.2) in an 8:30pm - 11pm time slot

 

100 out of 100 tv folks would rather have #2. Not even close 60 rating is something that TV folks can't even conceive of anymore as the Super Bowl doesn't even get into the 50s.

 

So while there are problems comping July 2012 Raw with July 1999 Salad Days Raw... I actually don't think "viewers" is a great way to make the direct comp.

 

John, no offense, but that's ridiculous. Ratings drive ads. More eyeballs = more ad money. Of course they'd take X viewers over a higher percentage in a world where the percentage means less than X amount of viewers.

[Bix]

Hasn't the number of TV households actually declined the past couple of years?

Cable households, yes.

[Bix]

Also, as long as we're clearing up how ratings work, I might as well rehash this:

 

Sweeps months (where Nielsen sends out a ton of diaries to be filled out by people not in their regular sample) have nothing to do with cable. They're for the local broadcast stations. The networks load up their schedules to boost the local stations and the local stations push all sorts of attention grabbing stories for their newscasts. Cable shows are only affected indirectly, by the stronger competition.

[jdw]

John, no offense, but that's ridiculous. Ratings drive ads. More eyeballs = more ad money. Of course they'd take X viewers over a higher percentage in a world where the percentage means less than X amount of viewers.

Of course viewers drive ad revenue. But it's relative.

 

More people watched the Super Bowl in 1975 than watched the Rose Bowl this past year: 54M vs 17.5M.

 

Driving revenue?

 

The entire NFL package across NBC, CBS and ABC covering not just the Super Bowl but all games was $50M a year.

 

The Rose Bowl just sold it's rights for $80 per *game*.

 

The universe of Eyeballs changes. The amount of ad revenue changes. The % changes.

 

Would you agree that the WWE would rather have their 1999 "ratings" for Raw extrapolated out to how many 2012 viewers that would be? Or are they perfectly happy with their current ratings relative to what Stone Cold and the Rock were doing?

 

That's my point. Add in that 2012 vs 2011 year-to-year for USA Network isn't that radically different in terms of available viewers.

[Bix]

I may have misread what you were saying: Do you mean 60% in a vacuum or with 2012's universe? I thought you meant in a vacuum, they'd go with the higher percentage. Either way, they want as many people as possible watching. Also, remember that

 

At any rate, while yes, we've reached the point where a USA/TBS/MTV/etc.-level network's universe is not going to change much year-to-year, I don't think you can really extrapolate from the last boom period into 2012 numbers because so much has changed. The most fair way to compare then to now a way is just giving both numbers (audience and rating) in the proper context.