The Myth About Television Ratings and Why the Nielsen Ratings Are Not Only Wrong, but Could Be Killing Great Shows

The Nielsen Ratings Process is a Terrible Method to Figure Our How Many People Are Watching Shows, and Should Be Canned

Ryan Christopher DeVault, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Oct 2, 2008 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

As a television viewer, you hear about it all the time; that ratings for one show are, for another show they are down, and because they weren't high enough for a certain demographic that a show has been cancelled. With all of those numbers being thrown around, there is a lot being hidden from the public, a lot of whom have fallen under the false illusion that the ratings are actually fact. Well I am here to tell you that the ratings are not really fact, but the best guesses that the company in charge of deducing television ratings has come up with. That's right, while they may be educated guesses,the television ratings that a lot of people have taken for granted, are in fact just guesses.

The firm in charge of figuring out who is watching what show is the Nielsen Media Company. They work with some television viewers to come up with an estimate on how many people are watching a particular show. In order to do this, they take randomly selected people from the population, and have them either fill out diaries, install television meters on their home television, or have them answer questions over the phone. The random selections are made based on the demographics of viewers, which are broken down by race, sex, age, and a few other attributes. When one of the selected families accepts the position, they keep track of their shows, or if they are chosen to have a box attached to their TV, they just watch shows as normal, and what they have watched it sent back to Nielsen to help determine ratings.

How are the numbers figured?

Let's now take a look at how they come up with the numbers for the Nielsen ratings that are released each day to the public. Keep in mind that these ratings are pretty powerful, because if they are too low, a show is going to get cancelled. The ratings dictate how much advertisers are willing to or have to pay for a commercial during that show, and are thus very important to executives at every network. To come up with the ratings, Nielsen has placed 25,000 metered boxes in households around the United States. Saying twenty-five-thousand out loud sounds like a lot no matter how you say it; until you think about it for a moment and make a comparison to how many houses and televisions there are in the United States. The comparison: there are 112,800,000 households with televisions in the country according to Nielsen. Now say that one out loud: one-hundred-twelve-million-eight-hundred-thousand households with televisions. Breaking that down even further, it means that 0.02% of the country is measuring the ratings for the other 99.98% of the country. It doesn't even take into account that people in the same house may be watching different shows on different televisions at the same time. How many times have you gone to the other room to watch a show while your husband/wife watched a ball-game?

Nielsen equates 1 ratings point to be worth 1,128,000 households, and then works backwards to come up with the top rated television shows for the week. It gives an easier to read number by doing it this way, so as to keep it easy to understand. For instance, the premiere of Grey's Anatomy this year scored an 11.9 rating, which translated into a guess that 18.469 million people were watching the show. These ratings are then categorized and listed, and networks as well as most news outlets dissect them to figure out if they were reaching the targeted audience.

The Major problems with Nielsen Ratings

So few people dictating which shows are being watched enough to stay on the air is really bad for television, because it then means that shows which are really good, and could be watched by millions, may not be seen by that select 25,000 people in the pool. To put it bluntly, it could mean that zero people in the group watched the show, and yet 30 million other households actually watched it. The end result would be a zero rating, the show being cancelled, and 30 million fans told that their idea of a good show is wrong. Ever had one of those days where you came in to work the next day and everyone saw the same show that you did? We all have. But there have been many times where the ratings for those specific shows were so terrible that I couldn't believe it. That is just a small set to take an example from, but a mere microcosm of what is really wrong with the television ratings industry. It is certainly a big business, but it is something that really needs to be fixed in order to present a more realistic picture of what people are watching on television.

Published by Ryan Christopher DeVault

Born in Seattle, Washington, I am a 31 year old college graduate working in the field of Education and Research. I am also a professional freelance writer and news content provider. I can be reached at... View profile

The Nielson Ratings Web-site: www.nielsenmedia.com

Television ratings aren't actually real, but an estimate based on a small sample set.

0.02% of the population dictates the television ratings for the other 99.98%

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The Myth About Television Ratings and Why the Nielsen Ratings Are Not Only Wrong, but Could Be Killing Great Shows

The Nielsen Ratings Process is a Terrible Method to Figure Our How Many People Are Watching Shows, and Should Be Canned

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