This is from a now abandoned Nielsen venture to try and track out of home viewing. It attracted only two clients before Nielsen shuttered it. Networks still want the numbers, but no one was willing to pay for the service.
[V]iewing outside the home boosts the total national TV audience by 2.6 percent, according to Nielsen’s final report from its co-branded Out-of-Home service with Integrated Media Measurement, which was suspended in November.
The report pulled together nearly a year’s worth of out-of-home viewing data (March-November 2008) collected from a panel of 4,700 equipped with smart phones loaded with specialized IMMI-tracking software.
Daytime and weekends, dayparts in which people were least likely to be at home, typically drew the largest out-of-home ratings, but weekdays 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. got the biggest lift at 6 percent.
TV programs that drew the largest out-of-home audiences were big sports events, some popular network prime-time programming such as Desperate Housewives and House, and broadcast network finales, such as Fox’s American Idol. For Fox, out-of-home viewing contributed a quarter of a rating point to the network’s overall ratings, for a 3.4 percent lift.
via MediaWeek.
What are we talking about here? People at sports bars with “the game” in the background or people visiting friends and watching TV with them?
Or Slingbox?
squiggleslash, I’m believe the “sports bar” example is more what was being counted, but am not certain.
hard to count a sports bar since most have at least 4 games going on flat screens unless it’s a super bowl
Judging by the references to Desperate Housewives and House, it probably probably is less sports bars than people watching from work, other people’s homes, hotels, or satellite equipped vehicles.
Can’t see why networks wouldn’t want to pay for the information. If they can show advertisers that their programs have larger audiences they should be able to get larger revenues. 2.6 percent seems like that would affect rates.
dave, I’m sure the clients would pay something, just not enough!
Bill – thanks. Seems to be the kind of information that isn’t necessarily useful in terms of selling advertising, as I doubt most viewers take much notice of them, and if they do, they see images without audio. Probably slightly better than DVR, but not much.