I’ll have the fast affiliate numbers up as soon as I get them, but in the metered markets ovenight results CBS won Sunday night with a 9.2 rating / 14 share, followed by NBC (7.5/12), ABC (7.4/12), Fox (3.9/6) and CW (0.8/1).
CBS benefited from a ~30 minute NFL overrun into prime-time grabbing a 14.3/24 in the 7-7:30 time period. 60 Minutes likely got a big boost averaging a 11.4/18, followed by Amazing Race (7.4/11), Cold Case (7.7/12) and The Unit (6.4/11).
NBC’s Football Night in America drew a 3.4/18, followed by Sunday Night Football with a 10.8/17 from 8:30-11pm which was the most viewed program of the night.
On ABC, America’s Funniest Home Videos premiered to a 5.3/9 followed by Extreme Makeover: Home Edition at 7.2/11, and ABC’s beast Desperate Housewives with a 9.9/15 and Brothers & Sisters with a 7.2/12.
Fox’s King of the Hill repeats drew a 2.7/5, The Simpsons a 4.6/7, the new King of the Hill a 4.2/6, Family Guy a 5.1/8 and American Dad a Fox leading 5.1/8. Fox was likely very competitive in the demo, those results will follow when I get them.
The CW Sunday night which was sold off to Media Rights Capital debuted with a thud. Opening with In Harm’s Way with but a 0.6/1, then Valentine with a 1.0/1 and Easy Money with a 0.7/1. All below their Sunday night premiere results from last year, which were themselves woeful. I almost expect a press release from CW reading “It wasn’t us, it was MRC!”, but won’t hold my breath.
Note: The following results are based on the metered market ratings and exclude the New York, Detroit, Boston, Houston, Washington, D.C., Providence, Dayton and Ft. Myers markets.
Metered Market Overnight Ratings: This is normally the first available ratings information, and is based on the electronic measurement service that Nielsen provides in 56 of the nation’s largest markets. In each market a sample of homes is selected to represent that individual market. Often, networks or syndicators provide metered market information as an early indicator of a program’s performance. In aggregate, the 56 metered markets represent 79,890,610 homes, or 70% of all U.S. TV households. Preliminary metered market data are available as early as 8:00AM (ET). Final metered market information, reflecting line-up changes, pre-emptions and runovers, are normally available by 3:30PM (ET).
Doesn’t anyone question the accuracy of the Nielson numbers?
Hmm DH has weirdly low numbers …
I guess it pulled only 15 million viewers.
I guess DH got 16 million viewers, still not bad.
The Nielsen system may not be perfect but every tv show are judged by it. Can it count everyone who watch tv? No. What it count is a percentage of the tv audience.
DH lower numbers might be due to the season premiere effect, all shows sees an upsurge then lose viewers the next week, happened to almost all shows this season.
Johnthemon,
Fans of the now-cancelled CBS drama “Jericho” certainly question not only accuracy of the Nielsen numbers, but the validity of the system as a whole in the on-demand television age.
Nielsen’s sample is somewhere between 5,000 and 25,000 “families,” depending on who you ask. Families have meters attached to their sets, or log their entries into paper diaries. Nielsen does claim they are an accurate representation of the population based on census data. However, I’ve seen no proof of their diaries being verified for accuracy, and their meters have encountered a “zero-cell” phenomenon where data must be assumed. Zero-cell means a TV set is turned on, but no matching personal info has been entered as to who’s watching what.
Jericho was always a top TiVo’d program, top DVR +7 program (in percentage increase over live viewers), and a top iTunes download. Yet it was expected to obtain 10 million Nielsen-caluclated viewers as it aired at 10 p.m., after dismally low-rated “Big Brother.” CBS dramas “Moonlight” and “Shark” fell to the same fate – cancellation based on universally accepted Nielsen ratings.
My apologies for the rant. I haven’t seen the accuracy question in a while, and it was cathartic to vent those old feelings again
I’ve been waiting for the accuracy question to come up, too, since I read a quote from A.C. Nielsen, Sr. last week. “f you don’t believe in sampling theory, next time you go to the doctor and he wants to take a little blood, tell him to take it all.”
Julia, that does not comply at all. No matter where and how much blood you take, the content will be the same. But if you sample 5000 people in one region, then switch and sample different 5000 people, the results will be different.
Gusar, Not necessarily. If you have a base population of 1,000,000 people and you survey a sample of 5,000, you will have a remarkably accurate view of how all 100,000 people would respond. In fact, you would need less than 2,000 people to have results that would be statistically accurate (99% confidence level, +/- 3). Increasing the sample size would improve accuracy, but not significantly.
Thanks, Holly. Trying to convince non-believers that sampling is accurate is difficult. But I’m one of the converted who used to go on about how inaccurate Nielsen numbers are, so it can happen!
I’d also like to add that Neilsens doesn’t just use one constant sample. There may be 5,000 households (I don’t know the real number, so I’m using this arbitrary number for the example) at any given time, but each household only participates for a limited amount of time (used to be two-weeks, but I don’t know if that’s changed). So, while only 5,000 are part of the sample any given day, they have gathered data from many, many more. The fact that you do not see major changes as the sample changes actually indicates that the results are rather accurate. If you saw ratings jump up and down a lot, that could indicate that there was a problem with the sampling.
I’ve yet to see a Nielsen gage R&R study. Such a study would prove their accuracy to me. Nielsen would need triple the sample size they have now, but split into three “identical” groups. The television ratings – nightly, weekly, cable, broadcast, etc… would be run in triplicate for an entire season. The ratings would be calculated independently in each sample. Then, the three samples’ ratings would be compared to one another. If they are all within 5% error, then I would be convinced that Nielsen sampling methodology is accurate.
A simpler way that they can prove accuracy to me – tell me how many people watched the premiere of “Friday Night Lights” on DirecTV’s the101 channel. I am very curious to see how the success of FNL will be gagued.
A simpler way that they can prove accuracy to me – tell me how many people watched the premiere of “Friday Night Lights” on DirecTV’s the101 channel. I am very curious to see how the success of FNL will be gagued.
Um… What? You do mean that as a joke, right?
clutz, Are you willing to PAY for that study?
Holly, if I had the money, I would be. My dream when I’m a billionaire is to set up an independent audience measurement group to confirm Nielsen’s numbers. Non-profit of course.
The thing is, the people for whom the ratings REALLY matter (the ad companies and the networks) DO have the money, but haven’t started any studies or a different audience measurement system. If they were really concerned that Neilsen’s was inaccurate, wouldn’t they do something about it?
Holly, there were 12,000 Nielsen people meters in the US in October, 2007. Since then they were to be installed in three to eight more markets before the end of 2008, but I’m not sure where they are in that process. By the end of 2008 the intended the eighteen largest markets to be completely measured by people meters (as opposed to diaries as in the smaller markets).
Nielsen has announced plans to expandthe total to 37,000 meters by 2011.
So they have between 12,000 and 37,000 people meters in addition to however-many diaries in the smaller markets?
Yes Holly, that’s my understanding.
Holly, I did a bit more digging and here’s a release (although almost a year old) showing Nielsen’s people meter roll out schedule and some numbers:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/lpm_all_markets_announcement.pdf
Hey look, Nielsen’s answers for us… “We collect information from approximately 25,000 metered households…In addition, we collect and process data from 1.6 million handwritten paper diaries from households across the country during sweep periods.”
http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?show=%252FFilters%252FPublic%252Ftop_tv_ratings%252Fcable_tv&vgnextoid=4f5247f8b5264010VgnVCM100000880a260aRCRD&selOneIndex=1
clutz, Basically, the sweeps period does your study for you. It adds 5 times as many subjects into the sample. If there was a significant difference between the results during sweeps between the metered markets and the paper diaries, it would show that there is a problem with the sample. If not, it shows that the information gathered from the sample is accurate.
Holly,
Nielsen is the only game in town, for now, and they’re doing their best regarding accuracy. As for who pays for what, if I were an advertiser, I’d demand that Nielsen provide gage R&R evidence before I’d agree to pay them for anything. This all might exist already, just not free to the public. Still, I have to prove the validity of my research in my career (chemist) – why shouldn’t they? And Sweeps simply provides a bigger collective sample using different equipment (diaries). It’s not five repeated identical studies, compared for accuracy. As for discrepancies in diaries versus metered markets – they do exist. They’re the reason for the zero-cell phenomena.
Back in April advertising firm Starcom/MediaVest signed on with the set-top box data provided by TNS and DirecTV – it’s called DirecTView. Apparently, TNS ran a similar program with Charter Cable. Based on the encouraging results they saw, Starcom bought into DirecTView. DirecTView measures 100,000 households via set-top box data. At this point, it is only measuring DirecTView customers – as the pilot program measured only Charter Cable. Still, to me this proves that advertisers are questioning Nielsen’s accuracy and level of detail. Starcom was in search of something more. Only time will tell if others will follow.
(And no, I was not joking about Friday Night Lights. I’m curious to see if Nielsen can find anyone, anywhere watching that show. I’d love to compare their data to TNS/DirecTView data on the topic. I cannot pay for the data, but I’d bet DirecTV and NBC would!)