Sunday, September 22, 2013

The New SpotVault for 2013-14


This is my weekly ratings archive and it's back for another season! For now, the table numbers are pretty much identical to last year except for one minor addition to the lead-in portion.

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 early part of the season, I will be working on making the pages whenever I get a chance.

New in 2013-14, this year's SpotVault will keep up with a somewhat limited schedule of cable programs, though I'm not sure at the time of this writing exactly when/how often I'll update these. Check out what's there now: sv cable

The Numbers

Info RatingsFactors Metrics
# Day Date Time Length Viewers A18-49 Share PUT bc Lead True Sitch
1Fr8/2/20138:002:001.550.6225.23.6n/an/a0.73-18%
2Fr8/9/20139:001:001.220.4128.03.60.20.20.46-13%
3Fr8/16/20139:001:001.400.5226.04.60.20.20.64-21%
4Fr8/23/20139:001:000.850.2125.25.00.20.10.28-28%
5Fr8/30/20139:001:001.120.4224.73.40.20.20.53-24%
6Fr9/6/20139:001:001.260.5225.73.60.20.20.63-20%
7Fr9/13/20139:001:001.190.5226.44.10.30.30.60-17%
AVERAGES TO DATE:ViewersA18-49Skewy2yTrueSitch
1.270.4646%-8%0.57-19%

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. Live+Same Day Total Viewers. The total number of viewers (age 2+, in millions) watching 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. Live+Same Day 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 most of the work here is conducted in 18-49 terms. For more on why I use this and not total viewers, I recommend the Demos & DVRs portion of the Intro to Nielsen Ratings and the Peetooplus posts.

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. "PUT" and "bc" are 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 True 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. 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. 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. I also apply the new Sunday adjustment, attempting to offset Sunday's much higher overall viewing.

Lead - Adults 18-49 rating of the show's lead-in, or the rating of the previous program on the same network. These numbers refer to the final half-hour of the lead-in program rather than the full rating.

New for 2013-14! I'm adding a second number under "Lead." In addition to the raw rating of the lead-in's final half hour (blue background), I also include the lead-in value used in the True formula, which is adjusted based on the compatibility between the show and its lead-in (yellow background).



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 three summers looking at TV ratings from a wide variety of angles to develop these numbers.

True - A metric that adjusts the A18-49 rating for overall viewing levels, competition and lead-in. Trying to explain it any more than that is probably hopeless without writing pages, so I'll just point you to the True Index.

Sitch - The first "spin-off" number of True is "Sitch," but it's considerably less complicated. It calculates the percent difference between True 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 adults 18-49 within the show's total viewership.

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.

True/Sitch - One additional note for these two numbers: there will be some occasions when I add a week whose True 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 True/Sitch averages just apply to the weeks with True/Sitch numbers listed.



Sports Numbers

Info Ratings Game PUT True
# Day Date Viewers A18-49 Share Matchup Margin GQ
1 Th 9/5/2013 25.13 10.3 31 BAL @ DEN 22 +2% 33.5 9.81
2 Su 9/8/2013 25.40 10.0 27 NYG @ DAL 5 +4% 35.7 9.40
3 Su 9/15/2013 20.54 8.4 24 SF @ SEA 26 +1% 35.8 7.89
AVERAGES TO DATE:ViewersA18-49Skewy2yTrueSitch
23.699.5751%-3%9.03+6%

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.

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