Harder and harder to measure TV viewership
Feb 25, 2013 12:44 PM (ET)
By DAVID BAUDER
Associated Press
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20130225/DA4LQ65G0.html
NEW YORK (AP) - Every Tuesday, the Nielsen company publishes a
popularity ranking of broadcast television programs that has served as
the industry's report card dating back to when most people had only
three networks to choose from.
And every week, that list gets less and less meaningful.
With DVRs, video on demand, game consoles and streaming services,
tablets and smartphones, the way people watch television is changing and
the industry is struggling to keep on top of it all. Even the idea of
"watching television" is in flux. Are you "watching TV" when you stream
an episode of "Downton Abbey" on a tablet?
Nielsen, which has long had a virtual monopoly on the audience
statistics that drive a multi-billion dollar industry, last week took an
important step toward accounting for some of the changes. Starting in
September, Nielsen will begin measuring viewership through broadband
devices like game consoles for the first time. Right now those numbers
go uncounted.
(AP) This image released by ABC shows Eric Stonestreet, left, and Jesse
Tyler Ferguson in a scne from...
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"The ratings are a very one-dimensional look at what is happening," said
Alan Wurtzel, top research executive at NBC Universal, "and we now live
in a very multi-dimensional world."
Nielsen's weekly rankings count people who watch a broadcast TV show
live or on their DVRs that same day through midnight on the West Coast.
To be sure, this is still how most people watch television. CBS didn't
need anything other than live numbers to know that its new reality show
"The Job" was a flop, and canceled it a week ago after two episodes.
Through separate, less publicized rankings, Nielsen can also track how
many people see a program on a time-shifted basis. One ranking, which
measures live viewership plus those who watch on DVR or video on demand
within three days of the original airing, is what the industry uses to
set advertising rates. Other rankings measure those who watch within a
week, or even within a month.
Those numbers can present a much different picture of a program's
popularity.
During the last week of January, for example, ABC's "Modern Family"
ranked No. 12 for the week with 10.8 million viewers if you count just
the people who watched on Wednesday, Jan. 23. But within seven days,
15.9 million people had seen the episode, enough to make it the third
most popular show of the week behind two "American Idol" episodes. Fox's
"The Following" finished a modest 15th place initially, but its audience
jumped by 45 percent over the next week, enough to lift the show to
fourth place.
Meanwhile, almost all of the "60 Minutes" viewing is done live. The CBS
newsmagazine dropped from seventh place in the initial rankings to 15th
after a week.
The time-shifted viewing can change a network's perception of a show.
NBC would have likely canceled "The Office" years ago without this
additional audience. "The idea of how many people are watching a program
and caring about the show becomes increasingly important, and it is not
reflected in the Tuesday report," Wurtzel said.
CBS considers its freshman drama "Elementary" a case of public
perception not matching reality. Last fall, the show averaged 9.7
million viewers - respectable, but hardly a sensation. But between video
on demand, DVRs and streaming, CBS said an average of 13 million people
watched each episode within a month of its airing.
"If the number the press had seen was 13 million instead of 9.7 million,
it would have been seen as a huge hit," said David Poltrack, CBS chief
researcher.
In a world where people demand information faster and faster, television
executives are no different. They want ratings NOW. The problem is, all
of the changes in content consumption demand patience. Nielsen's report
on how many people watch a show within seven days isn't released until
three weeks after a show first airs - a glacial pace.
"We have to basically train the entire industry to no longer look at the
fastest information, which is preliminary and not necessarily reflective
of what the reality is," Poltrack said.
Nielsen says it regularly discusses how it releases ratings with all of
its clients and there's been no consensus on change. Most people watch
their favorite shows as quickly as they can, said Pat McDonough, Nielsen
senior vice president of insights and analysis.
Each week the average American spends 32 hours and 15 minutes watching
live television, according to a Nielsen study issued last month. More
than 12 hours is spent either watching time-shifted TV or DVDs, playing
on game consoles, surfing the Internet or watching video on computer or
mobile devices, the study said.
"The one thing most people don't think about is a lot of the additional
viewing is rolling out slowly over time and right now, live plus same
day viewing is the best way to measure," she said. "It may not be that
way five years from now."
Networks dispute the notion that things are changing slowly, although
they are happy that Nielsen will soon be able to estimate how much
television is being watched on broadband. There's a limit to the
information, though: Nielsen can't yet tell specifically what programs
people are watching this way.
Later this year, Nielsen hopes to roll out a pilot program to identify
what people are watching on iPads. It's unclear when this technology
will be available for other tablet brands or for smartphones.
The company measures some online video streaming and includes it within
its time-shifted reports. However, this picture is partial, too. Nielsen
can measure streamed programs only if they have the same commercials
shown on TV, and not every website does this.
Netflix's release of an entire 13-episode season of the well-reviewed
series "House of Cards" on Feb. 1 was a television landmark, evidence
that a lot more "television" content is coming from non-traditional
sources. Nielsen has no idea how many people have seen "House of Cards,"
though. Netflix knows. But it won't tell.
People are increasingly spending time catching up on series they've
caught on to midstream, the phenomenon known as binge viewing. No one
really knows who is spending an evening watching three episodes from the
first season of "Homeland" instead of live TV. Nielsen has an oblique
way to illustrate that binge viewing is a reality: When AMC's "The
Walking Dead" returned from a hiatus on Feb. 10, the 12.3 million people
who watched that night was a series record and evidence that it had
attracted new fans during a pause in original episodes.
That episode of "The Walking Dead" was the ninth most-watched television
show in prime time that week, but it would have taken some investigation
to know that. Nielsen ranks broadcast and cable shows separately even
though that distinction means little to a younger generation of viewers.
TV is TV.
Cable networks are in no hurry to change that because, with the
exception of the biggest hits, even relatively unsuccessful broadcast
programs get more viewers than cable.
There's a similar dynamic with PBS. The public broadcasting system
generally doesn't pay Nielsen to have its programs rated, although it
will on special occasions. The 8.2 million people who watched the
third-season finale of "Downton Abbey" on Feb. 17 was more than anything
seen on ABC, Fox or NBC that night. No one would have known that unless
they'd seen a report generated by a PBS press release.
The numbers-crunchers within the industry know all of this.
Nielsen's Tuesday rankings - and the achievement of getting into the
week's Top Ten - used to mean the world. Now it's a small part of
television's picture.
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