Lecture 10: Ratings

Learning objectives:

The Ratings Business -- Understand how and why Arbitron, Nielson, and their competitors collect and use data on audiences for local, network, and syndicated clients

Collecting Data -- Describe different methods of gathering ratings data: diaries, passive meters, people meters, coincidentals, recall, personal interviews

Samples -- Comprehend how sampling works, and understand sampling error, response rate, and sampling deficiencies

Determining Ratings and Shares -- Describe market delineation, units of measure, how ratings, HUT, and shares are derived, and meaning of cume and demographics

Use and Abuse of Ratings -- Understand industry self-policing measures, the reliability and validity of ratings, and problems with rating such as hyping

Broadcast Audiences -- Discern who makes up electronic media audiences and how knowledge about audiences affects what media do.

Remote Controls -- Describe remote control device impact on viewing habits

Cable Audiences -- Discern who makes up cable audiences, how cable ratings are reported, and what viewing patterns exist for cable programs

Research on VCRs -- Comprehend how VCRs have changed audiences and affected ratings gathered for electronic media

Internet Use -- Understand how audiences accessing Internet sites may be measured as the medium becomes more important in advertising

Attitudinal Research -- Describe how researchers try to find out people's subjective reactions, such as what people like and dislike

Ratings Business

There are two ratings firms that dominate TV and radio ratings research:

Arbitron -- left TV and cable ratings in 1994, now dominates radio ratings
A.C. Nielson – left radio ratings in 1964, now the sole provider of ratings research in TV and cable, except for:

Companies like Statistical Research, Inc (SRI), which do specialized and more costly research (though Nielson and Arbitron are very costly, as well)

Revenues -- derived from subscribers: broadcast and cable networks, broadcast stations, ad agencies, syndicators.  Station rates vary based on station revenue. Costs may be as high as a million dollars a year.

Local Markets

Nielson Station Index (NSI) -- the local TV market measure: 211 markets

Ratings Periods -- for most local markets, are called sweeps -- four weeks four times a year

Radio ratings by Arbitron -- 260 local markets, 95 covered year-round, the rest in spring and fall

Networks

Nielson Television Index (NTI) -- daily network ratings -- 5,000 homes

RADAR – a service of SRI – the only measure of network radio -- 12,000 phone surveys in a sample week, twice a year

Cassandra -- Nielson service that measures demographics and numbers for first-run and off-network syndication

Collecting Data

Diaries – are used for almost all local market ratings. Arbitron issues one to every person in the house, Nielson asks one person to be responsible.  Everything (supposedly) that everybody watches or listens to has to be written down.  The diary method is flawed because of intentional and unintentional inaccuracy and because of diary fatigue.

Passive Household Meter (Audimeter) -- records when the set is on and the channel to which it is tuned – no longer used in network ratings since 1987, but still used for some local markets.

Peoplemeter -- requires all the members of the household to check in and check out when beginning and ending their viewing.

Passive Peoplemeter – still in the testing stages and not widely distributed -- "recognizes" each viewer in a household – either through computer recognition or heat-sensing.

Telephone Surveys – coincidental – caller asks respondents what they are watching right then. Recall – caller asks respondents what they watched the evening before.

Personal interviews -- easy, but not representative – they are convenience samples – door-to-door and man-on-the-street.

Sampling

Sampling – studying the behavior of some people to represent the behavior of all – concerned with three things:

Behavior sampling -- what is it? -- turn on, select a channel or station, turn off

Time sampling -- every few weeks or months, rather than daily, except for Nielson Television (network) Index (NTI)

Number of people sampled -- Nielson uses a few hundred households in local markets, 5,000 for the whole country.

Probability -- the laws of chance
Random Sampling -- essential to statistical theory
Multistage Area Probability Sampling -- geographic narrowing through random sampling at four different stages, which makes the figures statistically invalid – one of the pajor problems with Nielson's numbers.
Random Digit Dialing -- generates phone numbers without refering to directories

Sampling Error -- a sample is always an estimate—error is introduced as soon as a sample is taken.
Non-sampling Error -- mistakes in reporting, both intentional and inadvertant
Non-response Error -- are the folks who don't respond to the initial request like the ones who do? Are their viewing habits and attitudes about TV the same?
Determining Ratings and Shares

Arbitron -- Area of Dominant Influence (ADI) for radio broadcast market
Nielson -- Designated Market Area (DMA) for TV broadcast market

Both also measure behavior in the Metro area -- smaller than the ADI or DMA, and in the Total Survey Area (TSA) which measures 98% of all possible listeners or viewers and may overlap with TSAs for other markets – the Total Service Area (TSA) is larger than the ADI/DMA.

Each county in the US is assigned to one and only one DMA.  The largest is 
New York, NY (7 million) and the smallest is Glendive, MT (4000)

TV ratings measure households, Radio ratings measure individuals

Rating -- the percentage of households tuned in out of total TV households
Highest ever -- last episode of MASH 60.2

Share -- the percentage of households tuned in out of all that are actually watching TV

Ratings are most important to advertisers, who see it as a measure of how many people were exposed to their advertising.  Shares are most important to programmers, who see it as how their shows are doing against the competition in a particular time slot.

HUT (Households Using TV) percentage varies with daypart -- averages are 25% daytime, 60% during primetime

Persons Using Radio (PUR) – these reports refer to blocks of time rather than specific programs.  Generally measured in quarter-hours.

CUMES -- radio rating -- the total number of different, unduplicated listeners over a period of time

Demographics -- most common -- by gender and age group – most advertisers buy specific demographics (i.e. women 18-34) rather than generalized audiences

Use and Abuse of Ratings

Ratings are not hard facts -- they are always merely estimates, but they are used to determine how billions of advertising dollars are spent.

Electronic Ratings Media Council (EMRC) -- accrediting body for ratings

Reliability – refers to the degree that the results remain consistent over time, and generally they do.

Validity – refers to the degree that the numbers really measure what they purport to measure.  Many groups are underrepresented, such as very poor, very rich, very old, very young.

You can assume reliability, but not validity – the estimates misrepresent the groups above and do not measure viewing outside the home.

Hyping – during the sweeps, for example – refers to deliberate attempts to manipulate ratings by scheduling special programming, contests, and promotions.  However, it is a wide-spread and accepted practice.

Tampering -- fraud and deception – refers to influencing viewing habits of individuals – a few households make a big difference in small markets.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative – ratings do nothing to measure the actual merit of show based on its artistic and creative qualities – in other words, the actual "quality" of a show (which is highly subjective).  Ratings are strictly quantitative.

Broadcast Audiences

Set penetration -- more than 98% -- for all practical purposes, the entire population
Set use -- 12% at 7:00 AM, climbing to 70% at 10:00 PM
Radio -- drive times show the  highest listenership.

The TV habit – people will watch the least objectionable program (LOP), no matter what is on because TV is such an ingrained habit – "The medium is the message."

Impact of remote controls -- 30% in '85, 90% in '95 -- eliminates tuning inertia and allows viewers to channel surf and zap the audio of commercials.  Tuning inertia is still a factor for radio.

TV v iewing time -- average of 7 hours, 16 minutes total per family per day.
Radio listening time -- approximately 23 hrs per week

Cable Audiences

The potential cable audience is determined not by the number of homes passed by cable (over 90% of TV households), but by the number of subscribers to cable (about 66% of TV households)

Because of cable's many channels and problems with connecting measuring devices to cable decoders, measuring cable viewing is very difficult.  Nielson measures only national cable channels and a very few local markets.

VCR Research 

VCRs are ubiquitous – they are in more than 80% of TV households – more than 20% have two or more VCRs.

Measuring VCR use is completely different than measuring anything else.  They are used primarily for four purposes:

Timeshifting broadcast or cable programming, either because it can't be watched at the airing time or specifically to be able to zap commercials later on.
Archiving broadcast or cable programming – to develop a permanent home video library
Viewing prerecorded tapes – which may be purchased or rented
Viewing home recordings – made with home camcorders

Causes probems for advertisers because programs can have commercials zapped (during recording) or zipped (fast forward during playback).

Other Research Methods

Focus groups – gain insight about people's motivation for watching certain programming through informal discussion-interview sessions

Program Analysis – minute-by-minute self-reporting of levels of interest while watching programming – often used in conjunction with focus groups

Physiological testing – monitors involuntary physical reactions like muscle movement, heart rate, galvanic skin response, etc. while watching programming.

Audience response – these are phone calls, e-mail and letters from viewers – these are not reliable and are not taken nearly as seriously as hard ratings data