The Summer Climate, Weeks 47-50

The Climate is back for the last of three looks at the "big picture" numbers of the broadcast networks' summer!

Week-by-week:

Week	Ending	TPUT	y2y	bc	y2y	LeAv	y2y
47	8/18/2013	29.0	-3%	4.2	-16%	1.36	-19%
48	8/25/2013	29.3	-2%	4.5	-12%	1.42	-13%
49	9/1/2013	28.5	-3%	4.1	-5%	1.35	-22%
50	9/8/2013	30.6	-5%	6.7	+0%	1.57	-10%

Summer-to-date:

Week	Ending	TPUTy2d	y2dy2y	bcy2d	y2dy2y	LAy2d	y2dy2y
46	8/11/2013	28.7	-5%	4.8	-27%	1.47	-6%
47	8/18/2013	28.7	-4%	4.7	-26%	1.46	-7%
48	8/25/2013	28.9	-4%	4.8	-23%	1.46	-7%
49	9/1/2013	28.9	-4%	4.8	-23%	1.45	-8%
50	9/8/2013	29.1	-4%	5.1	-22%	1.46	-8%

The fall is finally upon us, with the week 50 overall viewing and broadcast viewing taking a massive week-to-week upswing (almost entirely fueled by the return of NFL football).

Through the last "fully summer" week of the season, the original entertainment average for the summer ended up at -8% year-to-year, which was better than the -11% in the regular season. If not for the Olympics comparisons and The Voice running late, it probably would've been a little worse than -8%, but that 1.46 league average ended up being a very consistent level for most of the summer. (It's been within a hundredth of that number for the summer to date each of the last ten weeks.)

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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.