Please refer to the SpotVault Index for a complete listing of shows.
Updates
Once things settle down, I will do the vast majority of SpotVault updating on Wednesdays when I get half-hour breakdowns for the previous week. In the ratings-rush portion of the year, I will be working on making the pages whenever I get a chance.
As returning shows come back, I'm going to try to remember to update their previous 2011-12 pages with 1) True2 numbers and 2) summer rerun numbers if applicable.
The Numbers
| Info | Ratings | Factors | Metrics | ||||||||||||
| # | Day | Date | Time | Length | Viewers | A18-49 | Share | PUT | bc | Lead | True2 | Sitch | |||
| 1 | Mo | 8/13/2012 | 10:00 | 1:00 | 5.64 | 2.0 | 5 | 32.9 | 7.4 | 1.8 | 1.75 | +14% | |||
| 2 | Mo | 8/20/2012 | 10:00 | 1:00 | 4.90 | 1.7 | 5 | 31.2 | 6.8 | 1.2 | 1.69 | +1% | |||
| 3 | Mo | 8/27/2012 | 10:00 | 1:00 | 4.67 | 1.6 | 4 | 32.0 | 6.8 | 1.1 | 1.56 | +3% | |||
| 4 | Mo | 9/3/2012 | 10:00 | 1:00 | 4.62 | 1.5 | 4 | 32.7 | 6.4 | 1.0 | 1.43 | +5% | |||
| AVERAGES TO DATE: | Viewers | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | True2 | Sitch | |||||||||
| 4.96 | 1.70 | 43% | -4% | 1.61 | +6% | ||||||||||
Info - These are common knowledge things; we have the episode number, the day of the week, the date, the start time and the episode length. For logistical reasons, I'll continue to round off "Time" and "Length" for minor overruns (like when a program runs to 10:02 rather than 10:00). Otherwise, those should be fairly self-explanatory.
Ratings - All of these numbers come straight from Nielsen (though I get them indirectly from other people), meaning I haven't "massaged" them in any way.
Viewers - From Nielsen. The total number of viewers (age 2+, in millions) that watched the program. Though this number has a dubious correlation with renewability and advertising rates, it is the most easily accessible TV ratings number.
A18-49 - From Nielsen. Adults 18-49 rating. Percentage of US TV-owning adults 18-49 watching the program. This is the publicly available TV ratings currency that correlates best with renewals and ad rates, so I talk almost exclusively in 18-49 terms. For more on why I use this and not total viewers, I recommend the Intro to Nielsen Ratings and the Peetooplus project.
Share - Adults 18-49 share. The average percentage of TV-watching adults 18-49 in the USA that watched the program.
Factors - These three numbers comprise the "big three" things that have an influence on TV ratings not counting the "True Strength" of the show. For this year, I'm changing "PUT" and "bc" to more "massaged" numbers that will make for better comparisons across timeslots. My thinking is that not too many people care about these numbers anyway, so I may as well use numbers that are closer to what actually goes into the True2 formula.
PUT - ESTIMATED average percentage of TV-owning adults 18-49 persons currently using TV in the show's timeslot. This is an estimate based on all the ratings/shares in a given timeslot, so there is some margin of error. New this year, I also apply the Old Methodology adjustment to make these numbers more indicative of how many people are watching the timeslot on a Live+SD basis.
bc - Average percentage of TV-owning adults 18-49 watching known broadcast TV shows that air in the show's timeslot. New this year, I apply the 10:00 adjustment to this number so that it's somewhat more reasonable to compare 10:00 numbers with those in other timeslots.
Lead - Adults 18-49 rating of the show's lead-in, or the rating of the previous program on the same network. New this year, these numbers refer to the final half-hour of the lead-in program rather than the full rating.
Metrics - So we've gone from the Nielsen-supplied to the somewhat massaged calculations to the heavily massaged calculations. I've spent a huge chunk of the last two summers looking at TV ratings from a wide variety of angles to develop these numbers.
True2 - "True Strength" is the main fruit of my labor the last two summers, a metric that adjusts the A18-49 rating for overall viewing levels, competition and lead-in. This number is (supposed to be) more consistent across drastic timeslot moves and across the entirety of the season than raw adults 18-49 ratings.
Sitch - The first "spinoff" number of True Strength is "Sitch," but it's considerably less complicated. It calculates the percent difference between True2 and 18-49 rating, a measure of how easy or difficult a given show's timeslot is. The higher the Sitch, the "easier" or more beneficial the show's timeslot situation. I guess if your goal is to be able to make excuses for your show's ratings, lower Sitch is better.
AVERAGES TO DATE - These numbers average all of the season-to-date numbers every week. An important note is that all these numbers (and averages used elsewhere on the site) are "weighted" for the show length; for example, a double-length episode counts twice.
Skew - Percentage of the total viewer audience that falls within the 18-49 demographic.
y2y - Difference between the season-to-date A18-49 average and the A18-49 average from one year ago through the same number of episodes.
True2/Sitch - One additional note for these two numbers: there will be some occasions when I add a week whose True2 numbers are not yet final. (This will mostly apply to Monday shows; I get the breakdowns for the previous week on Wednesday, meaning the only day whose finals I have for this week is Monday.) In these cases, the True2/Sitch averages just apply to the weeks with True2/Sitch numbers listed.
Sports Numbers
| Info | Ratings | Game | PUT | True2 | ||||||||
| # | Day | Date | Viewers | A18-49 | Share | Matchup | Margin | GQ | ||||
| 1 | We | 9/5/2012 | 23.89 | 9.7 | 26 | DAL @ NYG | 7 | +8% | 35.0 | 7.14 | ||
| 2 | Su | 9/9/2012 | 27.57 | 11.0 | 28 | PIT @ DEN | 12 | +5% | 36.3 | 7.09 | ||
| 3 | Su | 9/16/2012 | 21.33 | 8.9 | 23 | DET @ SF | 8 | +3% | 35.8 | 6.17 | ||
Matchup - The two competing teams.
Margin - Difference in points between winning team and losing team. A rough measure of how good the game was.
Game Quality (GQ) - Difference between the game's 18-49 rating in the first full 30 minutes and the 18-49 rating for the full event. An attempt to measure how much "how good the game was" affects the rating. See this post for more.
2 comments:
Hi Soptupj can you add cable shows i.e. Dexter, True Blood, Burn Notice, Sons of Anarchy etc. to this ratings archives im trying to find ratings prior to 2010 even if its over time I really would like to know how the earlier seasons of shows did in the ratings and do you plan to add a section for cable in the spotted ratings in the future I think this would be helpful I am rtrying really hard to find earlier ratings for cable shows and am not able to find anything prior to 2010 thank you this blog is great btw
Thanks for the interest. There's a good chance that I will do something like this down the line, but I don't want to make any promises right now. Got many other things ahead of it on the to-do list.
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