The Climate, Week 13

Week-by-week:

Week	Ending	TPUT	y2y	bc	y2y	LeAv	y2y
1	9/30/2012	32.4	-6%	9.2	-16%	2.50	-15%
2	10/07/2012	32.8	-5%	8.7	-15%	2.26	-17%
3	10/14/2012	33.7	-1%	8.6	-10%	2.33	-9%
4	10/21/2012	33.4	-3%	8.6	-6%	2.30	-6%
5	10/28/2012	34.2	-0%	9.1	-3%	2.12	-16%
6	11/04/2012	34.5	-0%	9.2	-9%	2.32	-11%
7	11/11/2012	35.1	+1%	9.3	-9%	2.30	-7%
8	11/18/2012	33.5	-5%	8.4	-14%	2.13	-11%
9*	11/25/2012	32.4	-4%	8.4	+6%	2.02	-17%
10	12/02/2012	34.3	-1%	8.8	+4%	2.32	+10%
11	12/09/2012	33.4	-4%	8.0	-5%	2.03	-13%
12	12/16/2012	33.2	-1%	7.9	+5%	2.18	-13%
13	12/23/2012	31.5	+2%	6.5	+7%	2.26	+16%

Season-to-date:

Week	Ending	TPUTy2d	y2dy2y	bcy2d	y2dy2y	LAy2d	y2dy2y
1	9/30/2012	32.4	-6%	9.2	-16%	2.50	-15%
2	10/07/2012	32.6	-5%	8.9	-15%	2.39	-16%
3	10/14/2012	33.0	-4%	8.8	-14%	2.37	-14%
4	10/21/2012	33.1	-4%	8.8	-12%	2.35	-12%
5	10/28/2012	33.3	-3%	8.8	-10%	2.31	-13%
6	11/04/2012	33.5	-3%	8.9	-10%	2.31	-12%
7	11/11/2012	33.7	-2%	8.9	-10%	2.31	-12%
8	11/18/2012	33.7	-2%	8.9	-10%	2.28	-12%
9*	11/25/2012	33.5	-3%	8.8	-9%	2.26	-12%
10	12/02/2012	33.6	-2%	8.8	-8%	2.27	-10%
11	12/09/2012	33.6	-3%	8.7	-8%	2.24	-11%
12	12/16/2012	33.6	-2%	8.7	-7%	2.24	-11%
13	12/23/2012	33.4	-2%	8.5	-6%	2.24	-10%

*- Want to note that I made an executive decision on year-to-year comparisons. This was always a bit of a difficulty this season because the numbered weeks of the TV season did not line up well with the calendar. Premiere week began 371 days (53 weeks) later than last year rather than the more calendar-friendly 364 days (52 weeks) later. Yet it was essential early in the season to make the "numbered weeks" comparisons; in other words, we must compare premiere week of this year vs. premiere week of last year and week two vs. week two.

However, the week numbers become less important as the season settles down, and the calendar becomes more important. So I decided to have it both ways. As of this posting, everything starting with week nine will be compared with the next numbered week in 2011-12. For example, the week nine numbers are compared with week ten in 2011-12, week 35 will be compared against 2011-12's week 36, etc.

Why week nine? It's the first time that comparing by calendar becomes highly compelling, because Thanksgiving fell in week nine this year and week ten last year. Going forward, most other noticeable events to come in the season will be compared on more of an apples-to-apples basis: the holiday break in late December lines up decently (roughly weeks 13-14 this year vs. weeks 14-15 last year), the Super Bowl and the Grammys and the Oscars weeks will line up, and the May Sweeps weeks at the end of the season will also line up. I figured this was a much more elegant solution than having to apologize for how everything didn't line up week after week after week. I was gonna get real sick of that.

A couple other housekeeping notes: while week nine of 2011-12 is a bit of a "lost week" in the week-by-week lists, it is still included in the season-to-date comparisons. So the season-to-date comparisons for week nine compare weeks 1 thru 9 of 2012-13 vs. weeks 1 thru 10 of 2011-12, and week 35 will compare weeks 1-35 of 2012-13 vs. weeks 1-36 of 2011-12.

And the "y2y" and "Ty2y" numbers on the daily tables posted from this point forward will operate in the same way, comparing vs. the next numbered week in 2011-12.

While it might appear that this change has made the broadcast numbers "better," this was not the reason behind the change. However, it seems legitimate. Thanksgiving week in 2012 benefited big-time from an extra NFL game, while the subsequent four weeks have had more originals overall (thanks to debate/election pre-emptions from earlier in the season) and increasingly meaningful comparisons in the timeslots of the closing weeks of The Voice. When lining up the weeks on a more apples-to-apples basis, broadcast has looked a lot more favorable in the last month or so. But this pace will surely prove unsustainable in the coming weeks with The Voice gone...

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Click to expand for more on the "climate" numbers used herein.

TPUT - This is an ESTIMATED average of how many people are watching TV from 8:00 to 11:00.

• I derive these numbers by adding up all the ratings and dividing by all the shares in each of the 42 half-hours each week. That means there is some error relative to the numbers Nielsen actually releases. Sadly we don't regularly have access to those. I always advise not to rely heavily on these numbers for any one show in any one week, but the hope is that the error is minimized across a 42-timeslot sample every week.

• I include the Old Methodology adjustment, which makes the number more like a measurement of how many people watch primetime programming Live + SD, rather than a measurement of how many people watch any TV (including old DVR stuff) from 8:00 to 11:00. This makes the number perhaps less intuitive in a vacuum, but it's pretty much a wash when making week-to-week and year-to-year comparisons, which is what we're really interested in.

bc - This is an average of how many people are watching national broadcast TV from 8:00 to 11:00.

• This does NOT include the 10:00 adjustment used in the True2 calculation which attempts to account for Fox/CW programming and stronger cable. Again, that perhaps hurts the number in a vacuum, because the 10:00 numbers being used only include three networks, so I'm averaging timeslots that are somewhat apples-to-oranges. But again, it's a wash when making comparisons because I treat it that way all the time. It would not really change week-to-week or year-to-year comparisons, and that's what I mostly care about.

• Another important note here is that these numbers include the preliminary averages for "sustaining" programming like presidential debates and commercial-free benefit concerts whose numbers are typically omitted from traditional Nielsen averages. I might eventually omit these from this particular calculation, but they're needed on my spreadsheets to 1) make PUT calculations in those timeslots and 2) create a competition number for the entertainment shows that air against them.

LeAv - This is a measurement of how many people watch the average moment of original entertainment series programming on the big four networks. Meaning, no sports, no reruns, no specials, no movies, no sustaining programming included.