My love/hate affair with NBC’s Total Audience Measurement index (TAMi) is still on.
First the reason for the love, because it’s easier to explain. We often get questions like: I wonder how iTunes downloads do in comparison to DVR numbers?
They do so badly relative to the television audience, and even the DVR audience, that NBC now simply lumps iTunes, Amazon and — get this — cable video on demand (VOD) and mobile services all into one bucket. Even in that combined bucket, it’s pretty small. For the Heroes episode that aired on October 27, we know that the average live+7 audience for Heroes was 9.68 million and the DVR viewing component of that (though a lot of it happened the same night the show aire) was 2.73 million.
Combined VOD and Internet downloads for that episode were 68,966. So even DVR viewing is more than 38x as much as their combined category they stuffed downloading into. The overall average TV viewing winds up being 9.68 million to .07 million, and that’s with favorable rounding! So at best, even if you assume it was all downloads and no VOD viewing, and that it was all iTunes it represents less than one percent of the viewing (seven tenths of one percent) if you add it to the TV viewing numbers.
Downloading is a rounding error. DVR isn’t a rounding error as it represents about 28% of the total viewing.
The primary reason I hate TAMi is that it’s really more about PR than about producing something the advertisers could really get their arms around. I’m not shocked, but it’s kind of annoying.
If you look at the latest TAMi report you’ll see they report a TV audience of 13.549 million for the same episode of Heroes I referenced above that had an average audience of only 9.68 million. Both numbers are from Nielsen? How can it be so!? It’s because what advertisers care about is average audience, so that’s what’s reported here, and pretty much on any trade publication or blog site that tracks ratings. NBC is using the total audience measurement which is Nielsen-ese for “watched at least six minutes.”
I know, I know, “But Robert, it’s the TOTAL audience measurement index, duh!” But it gets convoluted pretty quickly. I can see the difference the puffery makes with television viewing, but there’s no way to get a handle on Internet streaming without seeing the minutes.
NBC includes any stream started as a stream whether you watch the whole thing or 5 seconds. There are a lot of streams, but even if you watch only ONE episode of Heroes on NBC.com, they typically (and this is according to them!) break it up into each segment that was separated by a commercial. So if you watch all of one episode of Heroes on NBC.com, you typically get counted six times. And if I’m only one person, and get counted six times — that’s not a total audience measurement. That’s inflation by 6x and pads the Internet stream counts nicely.
Hulu doesn’t work the same way, if you watch a full episode there, you only count once. Of course if you only watch 3 seconds, you count once as well. The have over four million streams, but whether that accounts for 500,000 views of the whole episode, a million or two million, we can’t know. And since there’s a significant difference between 500,000 and the 4.276 million reported, I’d kind of like to know.
Despite my love/hate relationship with TAMi (I also have a love/hate relationship with Heroes, if it means anything to you), I am happy NBC does it, and I’d rather have them produce the convoluted mess that is TAMi than not produce anything at all.
At least until they begin lumping in VOD, mobile and downloads with Internet streaming.
For those who missed the link to the latest TAMi report above, here it is again. It’s worth reading all the fine print of how things are counted and some data is delayed before reaching any conclusions about the trends with the most recent episodes of shows.
P.S. some shows, like Chuck, which obviously are available on iTunes and obviously have had some downloads, for whatever reason, still show no downloads.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:12 am
i know this is worthless, but it gets about 1 million downloads in the first couple of days on bittorrent: eztv, mininova, piratebay, isohunt, and a few others. The demographic for heroes is young tech ground and they arent going to pay 1.99 for a tv show, dont believe check the numbers on those sites for yourself
-same goings for most sci-fi/serial shows, but Heroes is by the far the most downloaded
November 19th, 2008 at 12:13 am
crowd*
-typing a paper @ the same time sorry-
November 19th, 2008 at 12:31 am
It’s not worthless — there’s just no way to compare as the data we’re looking at is USA viewing, and torrent downloading is worldwide. there’s no good mechanism (that I’ve seen) for separating out the USA volume.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:41 am
what about hulu and nbc.com how is that factored in?
November 19th, 2008 at 12:44 am
I know it’s a chore, but what about actually reading the post (or at least clicking the link to the report from NBC), how does that factor in?
November 19th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Well it’s #2 right now in terms of sales on the iTunes store and is regularly in the Top 5 so it looks like nobody downloads any TV show off of iTunes then. You could of pointed that out instead of singling out Heroes in the headline trying to get clicks. I know it’s your job to post about TV and Heroes downfall is a story, but it seems like lately this site(among others) has been going out of their way to point out Heroes downfall.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Clark, I went that route with my first post on TAMI a while back. I modified the headline, but going back to do the similar number crunching for The Office isn’t going to happen. I would’ve done it for Chuck, but there was no data…
November 19th, 2008 at 1:00 am
wow 24 eps x $2.00 x 70,000 = 3.36 million thats less than 4 million cost just to produce one episode of Heroes
November 19th, 2008 at 1:04 am
less than that after Apple gets its cut.
[edit] though the cost is higher if they purchase the HD version. That’s $2.99 per episode (and $64 for a season pass vs $1.99/$43 for standard def). NBC doesn’t distinguish between HD and standard def downloads, though Apple is pushing the HD to the point where from a user interface perspective it’s not particularly easy to find the standard def versions. there’s just a small link that says “this TV show is also available in standard definition”.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:43 am
I’m interested in what happens today with the XBOX 360. Today is the day that it becomes a NETFLIX box and in addition will allow people who are NETFLIX members and XBOX LIVE GOLD (ah the catch) members to download even current episodes for free.
NETFLIX warned yesterday that not all licenses were cleared yet (so limited numbers at first for DVD and TV show downloads).
November 19th, 2008 at 3:04 am
Does any legal download outlet (iTunes, Amazon, etc…) provide its own independent data on how many downloads a program receives? I’d be interested in comparing data from different sources.
Web streaming is a murky matter indeed. I trust a “completed legal download” (someone paid for it somewhere) more that streaming data.
November 19th, 2008 at 3:44 am
I download TV shows from itunes. It’s great for taking entertainment on airplanes & such, but what is interesting, is that I noticed on my Supernatural episodes, the music was changed. There should really be a disclaimer because the music is such an important part of the show. On the upside, the latest DVD’s had the digital download included.
November 19th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Robert, wouldn’t NBC’s server logs make it a lot easier for them to track each individual episode being watched? They know every IP address connected to their server, how long they were connected, where they came from, how many streams they grabbed, etc. Probably tedious to sift through it all, but I bet they have people on it.
About iTunes…I think the data on iTunes is good from the standpoint that it helps Apple know what TV shows to advertise on. Every person logging in to iTunes has a slew of purchases that Apple tracks I’m sure. If Apple knows the shows they watch and what products they bought, better for them to target that product to the rest of that show’s audience.
November 19th, 2008 at 11:35 am
FrankJ, they probably know all that information, but they are going to publish whatever makes it seem like they have the most viewers.
November 19th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Frank, NBC could do the work (I’m not sure how much data processing it is) but it’s still pretty pointless from my perspective. # of streams means nothing — at least nothing we can compare it too, without including minutes per stream. Because of the mishmash of measurement and no minutes per stream data, we can’t even easily track the growth trend.
I doubt Apple uses iTunes data for its decisions, instead relying on demographic data (age, gender, income, gadget buying propensity — Nielsen can track that to a degree). But I could be wrong. Does anyone know whether Apple advertises a lot on Gossip Girl?
November 19th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Robert, I think it is indefensible of you to ask people to do research for you. That is if it means watching GOSSIP GIRL. Shame on you!
November 19th, 2008 at 11:45 am
I’m not sure about Gossip Girl, but Apple advertises A LOT on Comedy Central, particularly during Colbert Report and the Daily Show, both of which do sell pretty well on iTunes, I believe.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
On Monday during Heroes, Chuck and Terminator, Apple ran the same commercial showcasing the iPhone 3G…with one difference in each commercial: they showcased the phone using a different application from the App store.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I watch all three shows so I’m aware of that. But I suspect that’s more about appealing to status conscious young men who watch all three shows, and nothing to do with iTunes data. I was thinking if they didn’t run the ad on Gossip Girl, then there was ~ zero correlation with their ad programming and TV Dowloads on iTunes.
Nick, you know you watched Gossip Girl twice and saved it on your DVR. Won’t you please tell us!
November 21st, 2008 at 12:14 pm
From what I remember, I watch Gossip Girl every week, there are not many Apple ads at all. I know its a different kind of company but GGirl clearly has a major sponsor in Verizon Wireless and their phones are used on the show, leading into or out of commercials as well, and that is the main thing in that sector that is advertised.