Here’s a bit of conspiracy grist for the crazies’ mill:
With ratings down this season, the head of 19 Entertainment’s parent company said Fox is looking to contest the Nielsen ratings — something Fox denied and Nielsen said it had no knowledge of. The top executive also said Thursday that he expects Fox to begin negotiating this summer an extension on its deal to carry “Idol,” which has two years remaining.
Robert F.X. Sillerman, CEO of CKX, Inc., said a meeting between Fox and Nielsen is scheduled for Monday, or thereabouts, to deal with an issue he called “oxymoronic”: “Idol” ratings have fallen, yet other indicators show that viewership is up.
Furthermore, he suggested that Fox has some grist in its argument, having identified a home with 14 people watching the show — which it was not given proper ratings credit for.
“There’s a meeting I understand on Monday between — I believe it’s Monday — with Fox and Nielsen,” Sillerman said on a call with investors. CKX owns 19 Entertainment, a co-producer on “Idol.”
“It’s oxymoronic,” he added, “that (Nielsen is) reporting gross numbers of viewers (that are) down, yet all other measures — like, for instance, the number of people who are voting — are up.”
via MediaPost
This should be amusing to watch.
Time for Nielsen estimate of true viewership to be swept into the dustbin of history. Dish, Directv, DVR, VOD, internet downloads and cable box viewing is more precise.
Ive only been following the whole Neilsen/TV ratings thing for a couple of months now, from what Ive read, the Neilsen system is somewhat flawed but how can Fox accused them or anyone of anything when they are running a phone-in voting contest where 4 people in a single household can call in continuously for 2 hours as many times as they want. How accurate is that of actual viewers?? Am I way off base here?
Good for Fox. About time someone challenges the Caveman methods that Nielsen uses. Nielsens poor process is hurting the broadcast networks which has a great impact on our economy. Jobs are lost because Nielsen sucks.
Sycore – the number of homes is potentially more accurate, but the number and demo of people watching that TV in that room at that time in that home is not.
And I sure hope there’s more to CKX’s arguments than that.
“There are two options: between a smaller, more engaged audience, and a larger, statically engaged audience. With our demo consisting of an ever more younger, internet-using, interconnected audience that is more likely to vote, the answer is obviously the latter.”
Err, what?
I think Fox may be getting to big for its britches. They were the first to deny Obama press coverage, and they went to war with the FCC over some language in an awards show (a battle they recently lost).
Ultimately, I think Nielsen could use serious improvement, but by doing this the ratings may suspiciously plummet for them. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you!
IMO this meeting is a joke. I ‘DO’ believe Nielsen needs to step up and change their methods by putting more boxes in homes. Like, millions more. A measly 25,000 boxes that are only in large cities should not be speaking for the entire country of 114 million homes. Thats just a fraction of 1%.
However, they challenge this with AI? Why??
OK so 27 million watched instead of 26 million. That saves the show from cancellation right? … NOT!
They should be challenging Nielsen on shows about to be canceled like Terminator or Dollhouse. American Idol… pfft lol.
American Idol is not content with the show being the #1 show in US.
Interesting. I wonder what happens now.
Didn’t Bill O’Reilly take on Nielsen on Fox News too, at some point? His beef was minor in comparison to AI though. And it was not an official meeting, just O’Reilly spouting off during his show as I recall.
Anyway, that’s a very tiny piece of evidence with the “14 people in the home” factor. What would be REALLY cool is if FOX can show STB data for total viewership versus Nielsen count, and see some real discrepancies. I know, STB data has nothing to do with the demographics. But all it will take is the right combination of statistics-plus-really-good-sales-staff to convince advertisers that the holy grail of youth demos is far less important to actual buying power than previously figured. Right now, targeting the 18-49 demo is “inside the box” thinking. Someone, somewhere, is going to start thinking outside the box very soon
.
Even if you enter the number of viewers in the ratings box, you cant assume that every other house has 14,10 or 6 people watching when you project out the numbers. There is no way to practically count “every viewer” in a cost effective way. If there were some other ratings company would be doing it. Maybe FOX and the other networks should give it a try – fund a new independent ratings company. Of course they wont do it because it would cost too much. This is all background noise.
If FOX is going to argue that if the number of votes is up but ratings are down – then convince advertisers to pay more for advertising based on those votes. You can vote as many times as you want from different locations. Do they prevent people from voting more than once from the same phone number? I dont think so, since I recall someone saying more people voted on Idol than voted for President. Even if they could prevent multiple voting from the same phone mumber, people could vote from cell and multiple land lines (home, work, friends house, relative house to juice the voting.
Bad Robot ! says:
“Do they prevent people from voting more than once from the same phone number?”
They do not.
Well, as a family that enjoys watching Idol, I can see how voting records could not be a good indicater of viewers. My granddaughter has been voting over 100 times per Tuesday show for her “choice”.
(I told her to knock it off, that she was acting like a Chicago Democrat)
“OK so 27 million watched instead of 26 million. That saves the show from cancellation right? … NOT!
They should be challenging Nielsen on shows about to be canceled like Terminator or Dollhouse. American Idol… pfft lol.”
Seppy – I don’t think they are contesting Nielsen numbers b/c of decisions of to cancel or not. They are trying to get advertisers to pay more for a commercial spot on the #1 watched show. If the viewership is down, the advertisers could argue the price of the ad spot should go down too.
Either way the Nielsen ratings should report their numbers including a statistical error factor. I mean if they are basing the ratings for the whole country on a select few households participating, then there has to be an error factor, because there is no way their data is always correct.
Seppy, maybe they don’t want to find out the Terminator/Dollhouse numbers were 1 million OVER reality.
I am inclined to agree that Nielsons numbers are flawed. The current trend of dwindling ratings seems to impact all shows across the board, which suggest to me that something is wrong with their system. I find it hard to beleive that ratings for so many shows would dwindle at such a similar rate, and Fox might be on to something because the number of phone call votes for AI should no doubt correlate with Neilsons numbers, and that doesn’t appear to be happening.
@SLP, you stated: “Either way the Nielsen ratings should report their numbers including a statistical error factor. I mean if they are basing the ratings for the whole country on a select few households participating, then there has to be an error factor, because there is no way their data is always correct.”
You are exactly right, with zero percent error in your statement. I find almost unbelievable that Nielsen has been allowed to exist for so long without providing error stats to their paying customers.
““It’s oxymoronic,” he added, “that (Nielsen is) reporting gross numbers of viewers (that are) down, yet all other measures — like, for instance, the number of people who are voting — are up.”
The year that Taylor Hicks won American Idol, there was a website, I think it was http://www.votefortheworst.com/, who boasted that their readers were “working” the Idol vote. I think they said that they were the ones who kept contestants like Sanjay and William Hung on Idol. And they claimed that they were responsible for getting Taylor Hicks voted the winner of American Idol. From what I read, they didn’t “watch” American Idol because they were fans of the show. Oh no. THey just voted for the person they thought was the absolute worst contestant just to see how long they could keep them on the air.
If that is true (and the multiple votes for individual Idol contestants is certainly true), I should think that the vote totals on Idol would be the least reliable indicator of viewership for the show. What’s “oxymoronic” is trying to say Idol’s vote totals equal viewership.
This certainly will be interesting to watch.
InternJack, as someone who was an email subscriber of votefortheworst.com, that is true. I would get an email every Tuesday telling me who to vote for and I would sometimes (not always) vote several times. Never watched the show.
Maybe the investigation will lead to the fact that the ratings for A.I. are even lower and lower and lower than is being reported and Fox has no option but to cancel the show.
Well for anyone that thinks the Nielsen ratings are wrong…American Idol would be in the strongest position to do something about it. I think this may be a case of crying the blues over an aging show losing it’s ground. But if anything comes from it this should tamp down the Nielsen haters, or prove them right. Should be interesting
On the concept that Nielsen ratings (or any other poll for that matter) may be flawed, I would recommend reading this FAQ from the National Council on Public Polls:
http://www.ncpp.org/?q=node/6#3.
Fascinating stuff, indeed. And consider that, using this standard rubric, Nielsen goes overkill–using 5,000 households instead of 1,200 for their national samples.
The reason the number of votes are up isn’t because there are more viewers. Instead the amount of very young voters who have access to cell phones have increased as technology has become cheaper and more available. Especially young girls between 6 and 15. For example voting for Danny and his sob story and trying to please his dead wife thinking if Danny wins she will be finally happy. Or them voting for Kris because they think he’s hot. Girls just vote more and harder than the boys do, and in more numbers. They have sleep overs just to vote their favorite in. But here is what I have truly noticed. Think back to 2002 when Kelly Clarkson won and you will recall that there were few young people in the Idol studio audience. Now think about 3 years back and that’s when the stupid thing started with the hand waving, and the heart symbols started. When the camera zooms in, what do you mostly see? That’s right. Girls and usualy many look like then are 10 or 12. And they all have cell phones or access to them. The next factor is they never get tired. They can brag about voting for 2 solid hours, while someone say 30 who has to get up for work the next morning has less energy. So there you have it. More girls, more votes. Also look at the fact that the last couple years the top on idol has been filled with guys. Battle of the Davids. Now this year is another repeat of that. You can argue, but before you do, think it over. It really does look like it’s happening just like that.
I wondered what sort of bearing not watching the show in real time has on the ratings? The commercials anger me so I dvr American Idol but I have never missed one of the episodes. I also agree that the voting on idol has no bearing on the people watching the show. The producers are very good at exciting the tweens to frantically dial or text for two hours. As an Adult I just am not going to do that.
Ellen, do you watch it before 3 am the day it aired? If so, people like you still show up in the daily ratings.
I don’t know if anyone has seen this, but the Fox station in Miami is suing Nielsen. Check it out
http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/MI119585/
@Matt, interesting article. This quote caught my eye:
“The Media Ratings Council, set up by the government to oversee companies like Nielsen, refused to accrediate the ratings system in South Florida because it did not meet their minimum standards, but Nielsen put it in operation anyway because the lawsuit claims the company wanted to tap into the lucrative cable market.”
Most major industries know an independent accreditation body through which they must pass in order to sell their goods and services. Google ISO9001, TS16949 to learn more about quality standards. It seems Nielsen has often been able to ignore independent quality standards because it’s the “only game in town.”
The phone calls are up? Well there’s a reason for that – people don’t mind spending 2 hour repeatedly calling the numbers. Also it seems like the times I’ve cared enough to call, I’ve yet to get a busy signal. Are callers up because AT&T can now do a better job of fielding the calls?
I do think less people are watching than before. I don’t find it being the water cooler talk that it was a few seasons ago. And the show can be blamed for that since we know that it doesn’t matter who wins since 19 will give them all record deals and put them on tour. There is no exclusive prize to the winner of AI. What did Taylor Hicks get that Daughtry hasn’t also been given?
I don’t really now what could be done to make it show exactly how many people are in a room at one time watching the same show, but at least in this modern world when TV is digital (or soon will be) you would think there would be some way to count the number of TVs tuned to a program nearly to the exact number. Sort of how they count how people visit websites.
“…don’t really *know* what…
This does not surprise me. I work in packaged goods and Nielsen’s in store data collection has much to be desired.
I have software that can make over 40 calls per minute. Last week I sent Danny Gokey 5042 votes. Fox is also losing money on Idol. Boy 19 and Murdoch really are starting to sound paranoid. Olbermann makes more sense every week.
So long as David Calhoun and Mitchell Habib rule the Nielsen Company, nothing is t good for Nielsen. They are making multi millions for themselves NOT for the company. They are greedy corporate executives.