The 2013-14 Climate Center: Basics

The Climate Center is the latest way to keep up with some of this site's bigger-picture numbers on a week-to-week basis. It'll provide a running track of trends across the broadcasters, including individual networks, genres, and days of week/time of day. These will include the numbers that have gone into the A18-49+ theme posts, plus some new ones. Like the Weekly True Power Rankings, it'll be free of any pesky analysis (aside from definitions of the numbers) and will get updated alongside the SpotVault in the middle of each week. These may or may not get expanded/tweaked over the course of the season; for now, I just want to get some of my immediate ideas out there. Suggestions welcome!

The "Basics" post covers the numbers that have traditionally gone into each Climate post, examining year-to-year tendencies in extremely broad categories like overall viewing, broadcast viewing, and broadcast non-sports original series viewing (or the "league average").

These numbers are up to date through the end of the 2013-14 regular season: Wednesday, May 21. In this post only, the "TPUT" and "bc" numbers cover all of week 35 (through Sunday, May 25).

More Climate Center: Basics | Networks | Genres | Days/Times

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Week-by-week:

Week	Ending	TPUT	y2y	bc	y2y	LeAv	y2y
1	9/29/2013	31.8	-2%	9.1	-1%	2.49	-0%
2	10/6/2013	31.6	-4%	8.5	-2%	2.29	+1%
3	10/13/2013	31.7	-6%	8.0	-7%	2.02	-13%
4	10/20/2013	32.1	-4%	8.4	-2%	2.04	-11%
5	10/27/2013	32.4	-5%	8.2	-9%	2.00	-5%
6	11/3/2013	32.3	-6%	8.0	-13%	2.03	-13%
7	11/10/2013	32.8	-6%	8.4	-10%	1.95	-15%
8	11/17/2013	32.4	-3%	7.8	-8%	1.87	-12%
9	11/24/2013	32.8	+1%	8.2	-3%	1.90	-6%
10	12/1/2013	31.4	-8%	7.3	-17%	1.94	-16%
11	12/8/2013	32.8	-2%	7.9	-1%	1.89	-7%
12	12/15/2013	32.2	-3%	6.9	-13%	1.83	-16%
13	12/22/2013	30.2	-4%	5.8	-11%	1.93	-14%
14	12/29/2013	29.5	-4%	4.6	-13%	1.25	+72%
15	1/5/2014	32.9	-4%	6.1	-13%	1.61	-15%
16	1/12/2014	33.6	-3%	7.7	-11%	1.76	-13%
17	1/19/2014	32.1	-7%	7.6	-14%	1.86	-17%
18	1/26/2014	33.3	-4%	7.6	+5%	1.78	-21%
19	2/2/2014	34.6	-4%	10.1	-16%	2.08	-10%
20	2/9/2014	33.8	-0%	9.3	+10%	2.06	-3%
21	2/16/2014	32.3	-2%	8.6	+30%	1.72	-14%
22	2/23/2014	31.6	-7%	7.7	-7%	1.79	-15%
23	3/2/2014	31.7	-3%	8.0	+24%	2.02	+3%
24	3/9/2014	30.8	-5%	6.5	+4%	1.89	-5%
25	3/16/2014	30.3	-2%	6.3	+4%	1.84	-3%
26	3/23/2014	30.4	-7%	6.1	-8%	1.77	-9%
27	3/30/2014	30.6	-5%	6.2	-11%	1.76	-13%
28	4/6/2014	31.0	-3%	6.3	-14%	1.74	-14%
29	4/13/2014	29.4	-8%	6.2	-10%	1.67	-15%
30	4/20/2014	29.1	-10%	5.5	-17%	1.62	-19%
31	4/27/2014	29.9	-5%	5.5	-14%	1.63	-13%
32	5/4/2014	29.5	-6%	5.9	-14%	1.68	-12%
33	5/11/2014	29.4	-4%	5.8	-19%	1.67	-17%
34	5/18/2014	28.8	-5%	5.9	-15%	1.74	-14%
35	5/25/2014	26.7	-9%	5.1	-2%	2.17	-5%

Season-to-date:

Week	Ending	TPUTy2d	y2dy2y	bcy2d	y2dy2y	LAy2d	y2dy2y
1	9/29/2013	31.8	-2%	9.1	-1%	2.49	-0%
2	10/6/2013	31.7	-3%	8.8	-2%	2.39	+0%
3	10/13/2013	31.7	-4%	8.5	-3%	2.27	-4%
4	10/20/2013	31.8	-4%	8.5	-3%	2.22	-6%
5	10/27/2013	31.9	-4%	8.4	-4%	2.18	-6%
6	11/3/2013	32.0	-4%	8.4	-6%	2.15	-7%
7	11/10/2013	32.1	-5%	8.4	-7%	2.12	-8%
8	11/17/2013	32.1	-5%	8.3	-7%	2.09	-9%
9	11/24/2013	32.2	-4%	8.3	-6%	2.07	-8%
10	12/1/2013	32.1	-4%	8.2	-7%	2.06	-9%
11	12/8/2013	32.2	-4%	8.1	-7%	2.05	-9%
12	12/15/2013	32.2	-4%	8.0	-7%	2.03	-9%
13	12/22/2013	32.0	-4%	7.9	-7%	2.02	-10%
14	12/29/2013	31.9	-4%	7.6	-8%	2.02	-10%
15	1/5/2014	31.9	-4%	7.5	-8%	2.00	-10%
16	1/12/2014	32.0	-4%	7.5	-8%	1.99	-10%
17	1/19/2014	32.0	-4%	7.6	-9%	1.98	-10%
18	1/26/2014	32.1	-4%	7.6	-8%	1.97	-11%
19	2/2/2014	32.2	-4%	7.7	-8%	1.97	-11%
20	2/9/2014	32.3	-4%	7.8	-8%	1.98	-10%
21	2/16/2014	32.3	-4%	7.8	-6%	1.97	-10%
22	2/23/2014	32.3	-4%	7.8	-6%	1.97	-10%
23	3/2/2014	32.3	-4%	7.8	-5%	1.97	-10%
24	3/9/2014	32.2	-4%	7.8	-5%	1.97	-9%
25	3/16/2014	32.1	-4%	7.7	-5%	1.96	-9%
26	3/23/2014	32.1	-4%	7.6	-5%	1.95	-9%
27	3/30/2014	32.0	-4%	7.6	-5%	1.94	-9%
28	4/6/2014	32.0	-4%	7.5	-5%	1.93	-10%
29	4/13/2014	31.9	-4%	7.5	-5%	1.92	-10%
30	4/20/2014	31.8	-4%	7.4	-6%	1.91	-10%
31	4/27/2014	31.7	-4%	7.4	-6%	1.90	-10%
32	5/4/2014	31.7	-4%	7.3	-6%	1.89	-10%
33	5/11/2014	31.6	-4%	7.3	-6%	1.88	-11%
34	5/18/2014	31.5	-4%	7.2	-7%	1.88	-11%
35	5/25/2014	31.4	-5%	7.2	-7%	1.88	-11%

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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 True 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. This is the number around which this site's A18-49+ number is calculated.