The Climate, Week 27

Week-by-week:

Week	Ending	TPUT	y2y	bc	y2y	LeAv	y2y
23	3/3/2013	32.6	-4%	6.4	-25%	1.97	-19%
24	3/10/2013	32.3	-3%	6.3	-15%	1.99	-9%
25	3/17/2013	31.1	-4%	6.1	-20%	1.90	-13%
26	3/24/2013	32.6	+1%	6.6	-14%	1.95	-10%
27	3/31/2013	32.1	-2%	6.9	-15%	2.04	-3%

Season-to-date:

Week	Ending	TPUTy2d	y2dy2y	bcy2d	y2dy2y	LAy2d	y2dy2y
1	9/30/2012	32.4	-6%	9.2	-16%	2.50	-15%
5	10/28/2012	33.3	-3%	8.8	-10%	2.31	-13%
9	11/25/2012	33.5	-3%	8.8	-9%	2.26	-12%
13	12/23/2012	33.4	-2%	8.5	-6%	2.24	-10%
17	1/20/2013	33.4	-3%	8.3	-8%	2.20	-10%
21	2/17/2013	33.6	-3%	8.3	-9%	2.19	-11%
25	3/17/2013	33.4	-3%	8.1	-10%	2.16	-12%
26	3/24/2013	33.4	-3%	8.0	-10%	2.15	-12%
27	3/31/2013	33.4	-3%	8.0	-10%	2.15	-11%

As predicted last week, the league average decline improved to -11% season-to-date, and at -3% for the week it was one of broadcast TV's healthiest weeks of the whole season, this despite the holiday mucking up the viewing in the second half of the week. (And Easter was a week later last year.)

The 2.04 league average for the week was the highest since week 22, and NBC's 1.64 overall average was their best since week 18. During weeks 19-26, NBC consistently had an average somewhere between 1.1 and 1.3! What a difference a Voice makes.

The comparisons should worsen somewhat moving forward for two reasons that I can see: NBC hadn't started airing The Voice on Tuesday as of this particular week in 2012 (but will next week). Plus there'll be more Saturday originals pretty soon with Smash and ABC's Bet on Your Baby, which will cause a league average deflation to offset last year's Saturday shows Escape Routes and The Firm.

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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.

Note: Beginning with week 9, all numbers compare against the next numbered week in the 2011-12 season. So week 9 compares against week 10 of 2011-12, etc. This was done to make the comparisons more calendar-friendly. See here for more on that.