Though most of our readers probably wouldn’t have noticed the difference, we’re sure a few of the regulars would, so we wanted to alert you to some site changes that have already been made or will be made in the near future.
First, and most importantly, somewhere in the fairly near future, we will be limiting our browsable archives of a lot of the regularly reported ratings data to two weeks of information. This change hasn’t been made yet, but we’ve been working on a solution and whether it happens tomorrow or within the next 30 days, it will happen. This will extend to our browsable archives for pretty much anything where we use tabular or list data, including the daily overnight reports, the daily cable news reports and the weekly broadcast and cable top 20s.
We know this will make some people unhappy. Though we’d have preferred to have been able to archive everything for perpetuity, we do understand Nielsen’s position on this. There are some Nielsen positions we don’t really understand, but that’s perhaps a story for another day.
We are also experiencing some issues with certain data that for the most part, even our hardcore faithful readers won’t likely notice. However, until we get the issue with the archives resolved (which will likely be very soon) we are reluctant to approach Nielsen with any, “Hey, what happened to that data…” requests.
We currently lack the data to produce the top 20 shows by brodacast network that we had been posting, at least in the fashion we had been posting them. We could probably replicate it with a lot of hunting and pecking, but given the popularity of those posts and that it’s summer, for now, we’re just not publishing it.
As a result we have removed the links to the broadcast networks from our secondary site navigation and replaced those links with links to TV Show DVD sales (which we find very interesting) and the ratings and other press releases we get directly from the networks. Although there is of course always some spin-meistering in the prose of those posts, there are usually a lot of numbers too. We typically don’t feed those posts into our RSS feed because often there are more than a dozen of them a day, but for the true ratings junkies, there is a lot of data in them.
We are sorry for any inconveniences these changes might cause anyone, but it beats not having any website at all! At least we think it does. We hope you will agree.
I understand their position, but I’m going to miss having the archives.
So they finally decided you were hurting business?
and you wonder why so many people are starting to sue them.
We need to host the archives in some obscure country that wouldn’t care.
Well thanks for the heads up.
Too bad Nielsen is being such a party pooper.
ON the bright side, I guess this site has reached the point where it’s getting in the crosshairs of Nielsen…that must mean something!
NOOOOOOO
Well, of course this website is hurting business! Why, I imagine that every Joe-station manager-Blow in Iowa rushes here every morning for the overnights.
Nielsen puzzles me. Always has.
ABCmedianet.com publishes the weekly numbers, but they seemed to have stopped doing that for the summer (little wonder – all of their series would be at the bottom of the list).
Oh no you didnt!
I’d say the use of the word “inspired” was…inspired
The big media corporations like Viacom and such were humiliated by the fact that some of their networks like VH1 Classics only averaged about 30,000 viewers in primetime and they did not want that information public. They corporations are ok with their top 20 networks and progams being made public because they have viewership in the millions but did not want the public to know that niche cable channels had virtually no viewers.
Methinks a lot of it has to do with Cartoon Network not letting people know how badly their ballyhooed CNReal lineup is doing, and using its “less than impressive” ratings to justify them changing their image and possibly their name in the future. Of course, kids aren’t stupid.
David / KaiZen: though I understand the thinking, we’re pretty certain we know the reasons for Nielsen’s motivation and it’s not coming from anyone at any of the networks. The truth is, we get much more data directly from networks (including Viacom owned networks and the Time Warner owned Cartoon Network) than we do directly from Nielsen.
If you want a conspiracy theory I’d go with blaming Marc Berman and James Hibberd complaining since they write for Nielsen-owned publications. It’s not true either, but it’s more plausible than the networks complaining and much more fun than the real reason!
Nielsen has been this way for a long, long time, so you’re absolutely correct Robert, it has nothing to do with certain networks. Even Berman has limits to what he can and can’t post, which is why he does a weekly top-30 list, but little beyond that.
Nielsen is protecting its intellectual property, which is understandable in a way. But in the same vein, it gets the vast majority of its revenue from the stations themselves (and they pay loads for it). The stations are not really interested in the numbers posted here – they’re far too general.
Thefutoncritic, about 10 years ago, used to be the go-to site for ratings (even though they only had households), but they too got a cease-and-desist from Nielsen around 5 (?) years ago and no longer archive anything.
I was curious, since you’ll be getting less information from nielsen, have you thought about getting the information that Tivo provides? i think it’d be pretty cool to see what shows are most DVR’d and which ads are the most skipped over, etc… do you know what i’m talking about when i say the information that TIVO has?
love the site though..miss the o’reilly v olberman chart tho:(
stephen
Doug, Nielsen seems to either not understand or not believe there is a lot of consumer (fans of shows based) demand for aggregate ratings data that can be presented with no risk of lost business to them. My memory might be off, but if I remember right when Bill and I were originally discussing the concept for this site, Bill couldn’t believe Nielsen didn’t do such a site itself. Neither one of us understand why they aren’t doing it now.
Strangely, Nielsen attempted to do a fan-based site that DIDN’T revolve around ratings. That site (Hey Nielsen!) failed. I’m sure they pissed away more money on that site than they would’ve by investing half of what they invested there on…us
@Stephen: The data TiVo makes regularly publicly available just isn’t very interesting (top season passes — doesn’t really have anything to do with viewing). While TiVo has too small a share of the DVR market to necessarily be representative of the national trends, the information they do have available, particularly through their StopWatch minute by minute tracking service is very interesting. There we could get a LOT of data for many interesting things (like how many people fast-forward through commercials, how many people listen to the opening theme songs, etc).
It’s definitely worth talking to them to see what they might be willing to provide, but TiVo’s data business is probably as prone to wanting to protect its intellectual property as Nielsen is ( and we know on the hardware/software patent-side, that is certainly the case) so I’m not sure how much interesting data would ever be made regularly available freely.
Well, for one thing, Nielsen sells its data to companies like Médiamétrie, who market them internationally. When there is a lot of data, which Médiamétrie pays Nielsen good money for, freely available on the internet, they get unhappy, because their clients are less likely to turn to them for the data. (I know I’ve been.)
So companies like Médiamétrie may even have a claim against Nielsen if Nielsen don’t take reasonable action to limit the content on sites like this.
Still sucks, though.
Are you planning to take down the articles themselves, or just remove the tables from the articles? It would be a shame if the discussions were deleted just because there’s a table in the article containing Nielsen data.
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
Ray, a valid point and I will tell anyone who complains that it is “all Ray’s fault!”
I’m certain complaints from Médiamétrie weren’t the precipitating event, but it might have gotten to that sooner or later. While one such admission is one too many, I’m curious what data you were buying from Médiamétrie typically? Also it is interesting that it sounds like it might be easier to buy a la carte data from Nielsen resellers than it is from Nielsen itself.
Squiggleslash. I’m not sure of our implementation yet and it is too complex to explain all the issues. But, if it is possible to both satisfy Nielsen and not have to manually manipulate or delete outright thousands of posts, we will embrace such a possibility.
God Particle, exactly!
IMO, the extra information makes the site more interesting.I think the amount of hits will go down. How sad.
Robert and Bill – your site has been a fantastic resource and whatever site you can provide will be of fantastic use for fans and scholars alike.
It’s the same issue with MLB numbers – on an individual, daily basis, they are simply data points, but aggregated in the long term, they are analysis and “become” intellectual property.
I can sort of see Nielsen’s point – you give any competent web programmer a SQL database and a week or two, and he can construct a website that, if fed daily Nielsen numbers, would be able to chop the reporting in any way imaginable – new vs. repeats, normal showing vs. out of slot, by network, by genre, by producer, by distributor, etc. Sure, someone has to spend five minutes a day putting in the new data points/entering the one time specials – but that’s just about all the followup work you’d need to do.
Which of course would render all but Nielsen’s data collection irrelevant – and would mean they probably couldn’t turn a profit (or even break even).
So yes, it bothers me that a datum is free but a collection isn’t. But at the same time, the cost of aggregation/tabulation has gone way down over the last century (such that individuals do it with databases/spreadsheets/etc. on a daily basis), so the options are to either keep our hands off the net results (and their profits) or watch as the data collectors stop making the individual data points public.
“Doug, Nielsen seems to either not understand or not believe there is a lot of consumer (fans of shows based) demand for aggregate ratings data that can be presented with no risk of lost business to them.”
Somebody at Nielsen must have a web browser, no? Enter http://www.arbitron.com.
The overall averages on the site haven’t put Arbitron out of business. Of course, as with TV ratings, business is done on detailed demo and timeslot info, not the aggregate averages Arbitron publishes freely on its site.
In fact, I seem to recall that Nielsen’s own attempts to compete with Arbitron in radio ratings have been spectacularly unsuccessful. If you can’t beat them, why not learn from them?
I’m pretty sure our site will continue to be a fantastic resource and while it can’t be good for our traffic, I predict it will be far less dramatic to our traffic than nobody currently caring about Dollhouse or Chuck ratings!
Tom, I agree, though there is no good and standard feed of that Nielsen data. Outside of the press release data (definitely no standard format there) and items blurbbed from other sited (no standard format there, either) we wind up entering or at least manipulating a lot of data manually. While we could’ve created a database with that information, competent developer time that should take only a week or two often escalates to a month or two and before you know it, it’s a $50,000 project. Plus, you can’t really do anything with it. The moment you offer any sort of ad hoc reporting ability, Nielsen would rightfully shut that down as soon as they found out about it.
Casey, sure, Nielsen hasn’t figured out how to embrace the huge fan interest in TV and errs on the side of not killing the goose. Still, Nielsen puts out a ton of free data (not just about TV) on its various web sites and when it comes to TV, I’d say that what Nielsen publishes freely is more valuable to fans of TV than the information provided by Arbitron. While I’m sure there are fans of specific radio shows, I can’t think of any fan-based interest in the material Arbitron makes freely available.
I love the fact this site aggregates so much ratings information! Ni modo, as they say in Spanish. Having never worked directly with Nielsen, I can’t say that I am thoroughly familiar with their standards, but I do comprehend this move. I am wondering if the same restrictions are placed on other sites that hold archived audience information, like Wikipedia.
Any reason you’re actually bowing to them?
The info is all available somewhere on the web, the fact that you collect free data and provide it to anyone who wants it is legal is it not?
I’m just saying if they do sue you, in the long run they’d lose. They also have created many enemies. I’m sure you could find some people with bigger pockets than them that would stand behind you and watch them get beaten to a pulp.
Nick, nobody likes a lawsuit when the one bringing the suit has deep pockets. Lawyers saluivate over the macho approach: Aw, go ahead and sue me, ya putz!” And sue they will, with a regular phalanx of third-tier soldeir ants willing to attain a partnership. Also, intellectual property is consdidered by many lawyers a pernicious development, but it is here to stay. Third, I’ve been copying much of the Nielsen info and find after a few weeks it loses its importance, almost like the daily paper does. I usually only keep unusual new lows, for research purposes, and I am well-enough aquainted with footnoting and acknowleging sources that “TV by the Numbers,” were they to be contacted and were they to give their permission, will be prominently featured as a must-see source if, if if I ever finish this one of three mss … Anyway, fourth, the site is getting better and better, really. I’ve becvome savvy enough to go right to the left hand recent posts section. I miss some of the fun of watching fans and antifans duke it out in the 21st cwentury way, but I don’t watch those shows anyway and people fight all over the Net about everything, so if you have to have that fix, you can get it somewhere else, I suppose. It’s hard to predict fanboys’ behavbior, but I don’t think our hosts need to sweat it much because info junkies usually have eclectic and elastic tastes.
Alejandro, technically they probably are. But the thing about Wikipedia is the information is disaggregated in thousands of articles, none of which are assembled in a very browsable package. You can’t scroll through the last 2 years worth of overnight or weekly information easily there. You can’t scroll through the last year of cable news ratings data, etc. You can browse the overnight data chronologically on Berman’s site, but Berman’s site is funded by Media Week which is owned by Nielsen. There are perks, but as others have noted, even Marc has limits to what he can post.
Nick, I am not speaking for Bill here — I think we’re aligned but I don’t want to put any words in his mouth. Mostly I agree with Jay’s comments above. There’s value in the easy access archives but from our perspective not so much that it makes sense to draw a line in the sand over. I look at it as cooperating and taking the path of least resistance. Don’t get me wrong, for some people there is huge value to easy access archives, but it’s not a huge part of our traffic. We’ll miss it, but not enough to pitch a fit over.
Nielsen seems mostly concerned with just getting rid of really easy to browse archives, which we can satisfy in a lot of ways that don’t involve too much hard work or blowing the site up entirely. They are admittedly picking on us because we did such a good job of aggregating the content (which was our intent). But given the overall importance of the archives from a site perspective, I’d rather cooperate with them and on this than fight them, and work towards better data access for certain information that I feel would ultimately benefit us more.
The nature of their request seemed reasonable. If once we’ve completed the work to the archives they contact us to say, “You can’t archive the press releases from all the networks for more than 14 days either” our response will definitely be different.
Robert, to be quite honest, I actually don’t think that we have bought any less data from Médiamétrie since we’ve discovered your site, but I’ve been using US data much more than I used to. That is to say, whenever I used to tell myself, “nah, I’m not going to pay Médiamétrie money for THAT, we’ll just have to live without it”, I’m now more likely to say, “well, we’ll try to look it up on TVbtN, quick and dirty”.
But I understand that from Médiamétrie’s perspective, that possibility alone still looks threatening.
Well, this sucks. I find it nuts that Nielsen should do this, especially since what value is really lost on the numbers anyway when the public knows about them? It won’t stop viewers from watching World’s Amazing Cockroaches if they knew it scored only a .01 household rating and .005 in 18-49, nor would it improve the numbers on American Idol if they see that maybe 25 million viewers isn’t enough for that show. They’d still watch what interests them and won’t watch what doesn’t, regardless of the numbers. Not only that, but we’re talking about ratings that are older than 2 weeks that won’t be archived. What’s the big deal with those? What can the public expect to make of them in any way whatsoever other than to just satisfy their curiosity as to how certain shows performed at certain times? It’s not like there are millions of people out there plowing through the web for that kind of info. And if cable networks are squeamish about the public seeing how poorly most of them perform, then hiding the numbers won’t change things for them either. Nothing will change to improve the lot of the networks by limiting Nielsen ratings from public view, so what really is the point? I mean, if they want to protect their data for their clients, then okay, protect all the specific stuff, but where’s the harm in issuing just the general numbers like the household and 18-49 demo ratings for all shows? Personally, I’d be happy with just those two, I really don’t need all the other breakdowns.
Why does PIFeedback allowed to keep the forum postings of the overnights up indefinitely if you’re being forced to limit it to two weeks? You can easily go there and find the overnights from when Berman started posting them there back in 2006 or 2007 all the way to now.
Ah… I forgot. I meant to add that Médiamétrie buy exclusive international distribution rights for ratings data in many markets, so they are the only official source for many countries. I’m not sure whether that’s true for US data but even if not, their USP is that you can get everything from one source.
Chief, PIFeedback is MediaWeek’s and MediaWeek is owned by Nielsen.
Technically no one is allowed to copy the info Berman posts, but everyone knows that people do. I sure hope you don’t have a problem with your renew/cancel index too.