Puppets explain the TV Ratings

Understanding TV Ratings

(From TVByTheNumbers.com)

This video is quite instructive:

Here are some definitions and explanations directly from Nielsen.

Common Terms:

TV HHs: the Nielsen estimate of the number of television households in the USA

LIVE+Same Day: The number that watched a program either while it was broadcast OR watched via DVR on the same day the program was broadcast (kind of, see below)

LIVE+7: Same as above, but 7 days rather than 3.

Ratings: Nielsen uses a ratings point system. 1 ratings point = 1% of the Nielsen estimate for the category being measured (more detail below).

A18-49 or Adults 18-49 Ratings  - this is the advertising demographic advertisers are usually most interested in for primetime shows.  It's the important number in terms of how well a show is doing.  Total viewers (P2+ above) don't really make a difference.

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It is our goal to demystify the #s wherever possible. Here are some helpful numbers to keep in mind.

Nielsen uses a ratings point system. One rating point = 1% of the Nielsen universe. 

If you see a HHs rating of 6.2, that means 6.2% of the households were tuned into that program. The math works like this (based on Nielsen estimates):

6.2% of 112,800,000 = 6,993,600 TV HHs were tuned in.

While TV HHs are a good proxy for how many people are watching, Nielsen also tracks how many people in each household were watching a show. 

Different shows have different numbers of people per household watching. It's not the same for every show. So it's very possible for one show with less households to have more viewers. It happens all the time. Again, we seek to eliminate that complexity by focusing on viewers and ranking our lists accordingly.

Nielsen further breaks their universe estimates into age groups (2-11, 18-34, 25-54, etc.). The particular age group ranking generally available is the 18-49 demographic. This equals roughly 131,050,000 (or less than HALF of the total universe of 286,000,000).

Advertisers tend to like the 18-49 and 25-54 brackets. Currently we only have access to data segmented by 18-49.

Has your head popped off from thinking about all of this yet? If not, read on.

Time Shifted Viewing – Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live + Same Day (Live+SD) and Live + 7 Day (Live+7). Time shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs which are currently in approximately 24.4% of all U.S. TV households. Live + Same Day include viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3:00AM local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live+ 7 Day ratings include incremental viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.

To simplify this, if you have Two Broke Girls on your DVR (and shame on you if you do) that was recorded at 9pm, as long as you watch it prior to 3AM, it will count in the LIVE+SD numbers. So same day isn't exactly the same day, but they always measure this the same, so it's consistent. If you don't watch until 4am (why are you still awake at 4am!?) it will not count in the LIVE+SD numbers but it will count in the LIVE+7 (live usage plus 7 days worth of DVR usage).

Households Using Television (HUT): The percentage of all television households in a survey area with one or more sets in use during a specific time period. The sum of the average ratings for a given time period will sometimes be higher than the HUT number because of households viewing multiple programs at the same time. If a household is watching two programs, it is counted toward each program rating but only once toward a HUT number.