Comments on: NBC’s TAMi Mostly Worthless, But iTunes Downloads are Hugely Insignificant

By: michael j lambie

michael j lambie — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:30:23 +0000

Everyone wants to control their own TAMI so they can [control] give advertisers a reason to keep spending. That’s not a sustainable system. NBC has nothing to lose here, since their normal ratings don’t typically put them on top. It needs to be third party, neutral ground, however, it’s hard when the distribution channels are so different amongst all the networks. Perhaps Nielsen will pull off something.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:21:36 +0000

Julia, and we suspect many of those downloads in that 200 million were free, not paid, but it’s mere speculation.

FrankJ, it’s not worth getting into since NBC isn’t reporting ad viewing here. I’m sure what matters most is ad impressions, but there’s no way to really derive that either as you can’t even assume that one stream equals at least one full ad view.

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:15:52 +0000

I just saw this: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/10/16itunes.html

iTunes has sold over 200 million episodes total, of over 30,000 episodes available. So it averages out to something like 7,000 per episode. Not much to brag about.

By: FrankJ

FrankJ — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:02:20 +0000

Robert, do the advertisements play at the beginning of each stream, or do those have to download separately? I’m thinking that maybe NBC doesn’t care so much how many different shows were watched, just how many ads were watched.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:53:01 +0000

Holly, and to be clear, the biggest numbers (tens of thousands) for NBC show downloads are for *free* episodes.

Paid episode downloads are much fewer.

By: Holly

Holly — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:07:48 +0000

Wow! I never thought iTunes and other such downloads were huge, but they are much smaller than I thought. I figured a high of around 200,000 for popular shows, not 60,000.

Great title by the way.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:47:01 +0000

Mike G, I agree, “here’s how show’s do on iTunes” is an interesting slice, but it’s so tiny compared to broadcast I’m not sure how interesting it is. As for the DVR question, what Nielsen tells us is that it is viewing, not recording that is measured. So if you watch 15 minutes of a one hour show, you’ll count for 15 minutes worth. If you record only a half hour, but watch the whole half hour, as Nielsen has explained it to us, were you a Nielsen home the 30 minutes of viewing would count.

Frank, on NBC.com some shows (though not all) are broken into 7 minute or so clips. Six of them make up one episode. If you watch the whole episode this way it will count as six streams instead of one. Also it’s not clear that clips that are just clips (short, and not intended to be the whole episode) aren’t counted as well, and it’s pretty clear if you start the stream it’s counted whether you finish it or not. To the degree one person started all six streams I think it’s fair to assume they made it through the full stream for at least five of them, but we have no way to separate that vs. anything else. Without minutes of viewing per stream, it’s useless in terms of comparisons.

By: FrankJ

FrankJ — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:39:27 +0000

I guess I’m not understanding how this “six streams equals one show” works. They stream all six in order, so that six parts make up one episode?

If that’s the case, doesn’t that mean that if all six streams were started then the person at least made it most of the way through the show? Unless they don’t know which streams were shown? Then it could be that either a few hundred thousand watched an episode, or millions of people started the first stream and then stopped watching.

By: Mike G.

Mike G. — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:36:04 +0000

It seems that the only way that the iTunes data is useful is if it is looked at as a separate chart entirely of its own. As in, here is what people are buying on iTunes.

I totally see your point that it has nothing to do with the real time TV ratings. The article did raise a question in my mind about DVR ratings. I can understand why those are more useful since the DVR is “engaged” for the full hour of recording the show. But, do they also keep track of half hourly data for DVR shows like they do for the real time viewing? So, suppose someone only recorded the first half of a show, how would that reflect in the DVR ratings?

By: TVaholic

TVaholic — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:28:21 +0000

A great article Robert. Very informative and educational.
Keep it up!

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:03:21 +0000

I wouldn’t mind them adding it all up — in fact, I’d like it very much –if it was engagement based. Then it would be extremely useful. I also wouldn’t mind “total audience” if there were some useful way to get at it like Nielsen’s “at least six minutes”. But when six streams can equal one person for an episode and a streams that are almost immediately aborted can be counted…worthless.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:48:47 +0000

I'm all for more information and I definitely think each number by itself may have some value, at a minimum to reveal trends, but the fact that they ADD THEM ALL TOGETHER when they are measuring completely different things betrays the entirely PR focused nature of the exercise. Look at our big numbers! Please pay no attention to the fact that our TV ratings are cratering.