Reuters is reporting that NBC Universal has agreed to use ratings data and other advertising products from TiVo Inc.

Let’s examine the announced portions of the agreement:

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Advertising Age is reporting on the C+3 commercial viewer ratings for the week of 9/24-9/30 - the first week of the new season where results have been made available. While the overall average drop was only 3% from shows to commercials (a smaller difference than I would have thought), Live+3 show ratings on average were about 16% higher than the C+3 commercial ratings among adults 18-49.

Broadcast Commercial Live+3 Ranking for Sept. 24-Sept. 30:

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Robert posted on the subject yesterday, but a host of TV journalists have weighed in since then about the “turmoil” the new C+3 ratings is going to cause and I wanted to comment on the upcoming changes as well.

Many concerns have been voiced:

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Your momma is so old she watches CSI instead of Grey’s Anatomy? I’m trying to learn what advertisers value. Earlier I questioned the difference in pricing for a 30 second spot on Grey’s Anatomy vs. CSI: $419K vs. $248K according to the Fall season Advertising Age survey. I speculated that the price differential probably wasn’t completely based on the 18-49 category because there was only about a 9% difference there, and the premium is significantly higher than 9%.

I went digging around and found this ABC press release issued last Friday which played up that Grey’s had a 43% ratings advantage among adults aged 18-34, where Grey’s had 9.0 rating w/23 share. Among women 18-34 Grey’s pulled a stellar 13.4 rating and a 30 share (of women 18-34 with their TV’s turned on, 30% of them were tuned into Grey’s).

I’m guessing that it’s these metrics that are justifying the premium. As a % of the Grey’s pricing the difference of 171K between the cost for the two shows is about 40%. I can see where advertisers would value the 18-34 segment on a “they’re still young and can hopefully be influenced by us” basis. If that’s the case, from that perspective the premium doesn’t seem that outrageous. Although CSI had 20% more viewers, they were older.

Nielsen’s estimates for this season include a total of about 67m people in the 18-34 category and around 131m in the 18-49 group Each segment is fairly evenly split between males and females. While the 18-49 demo is surely important, it would appear that the 18-34 demo is more important. Sadly, we do not receive weekly information from Nielsen breaking out that demo, but we’ll look for the press releases.