What The $%*( Are Those Rating Numbers?!

Watercooler

By madeyoulaugh | Monday, November 13, 2006 | 2:57 pm | 6 Comments
Posted in: Industry, Ratings, Watercooler

ratings-tm.jpgI’ve been getting emails from readers for nearly 2 years now asking various “industry” questions. None more frequently than this one. “How do I read and understand Nielson ratings?” As a result, and to appease your curious minds, allow me to help you out with this. A Nielson rating may look like this: 8pm – NBC – TVgasm The TV Show – 10.0/18 Focus on the 10.0/18. The RATING, 10.0, on the left represents the actual number of households that watched a show. One rating point equals 1,102,000 households. The SHARE, 18, on the right represents the show’s proportion of the total households watching television at that time. For example, TVgasms TV Show has a 10 rating/18 share. That means 11,020,000 households are tuned in to the show and 18% of all the households with a TV turned on are watching that show. Ratings and Share are customarily broken down for various DEMOs — a demographic grouping of viewers, like 18-49 adults or 2-12 children or 18-34 women, etc. Advertisers, and therefore networks, covet the 18-49 adult demo, and so tend to concentrate on that number. Go ahead and test yourself. After the jump, find last nights (18 – 49 year old) Nielson Ratings on major networks during prime time.

Sunday111306

6 Comments

  1. 1
    jash
    Posted November 13, 2006 at 3:55 pm

    OMG i cant believe i am going to compliment you on an actual useful post FOR ONCE.

    but your formatting sucks dude.

    …you knew it wouldnt last :)

  2. 2
    realitylover
    Posted November 13, 2006 at 5:06 pm

    That was great! I’ve always wondered what that stuff meant…

    Where do you find ratings info like what you have printed here (i.e. the ratings from last night primetime viewing)?

  3. 3
    Madeyoulaugh
    Posted November 13, 2006 at 6:31 pm

    Jash,

    Im shocked Im about to say thank you to you of all people..but thank you, Im glad its helpful. In my defense, when I left the format was correct, someone tried to make changes and messed it up. eh hem, eh hem. Anyways should be good now.

    RealityLover,

    Ill start posting nightly ratings up here on TVgasm.com just for you.

    MYL

  4. 4
    sg-dub
    Posted November 13, 2006 at 6:39 pm

    Perhaps due to the embarrassingly bad formatting here, I’m not seeing Jash’s comment.

    And I’m a big fan of Jash’s insulting comments!

  5. 5
    Mark
    Posted November 13, 2006 at 8:50 pm

    Oh, dear LORD, MYL!!! TVGASM THE SHOW ON NBC? :-( I don’t want you guys cancelled after 3 episodes.

  6. 6
    Lyndsay
    Posted November 14, 2006 at 6:45 am

    Wow. This formatting sucks.

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Human Verification: In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.