This is how maddening Nielsen ratings are. After the season debut of Breaking Bad opened with 2.9 million viewers, the second week shed 21 percent of its audience according to Nielsen.
But did it really?
I mean, just think about it: Does anyone actually think that, after waiting nearly a year to get Breaking Bad back into their lives, and after hundreds of thousands of people became addicted to the show on Netflix, and after one hell of an awesome season opener, that suddenly 600,000 people decided, “Ah, f–k it. This show’s for the birds. I’m going to watch The Bachelorette instead”?
Of course not.
Almost certainly what happened was this: Because it was the first episode, more people watched it live because they were anxious for its return. The second episode, maybe 600,000 people thought, “Eh, it’s Sunday at 10 p.m. It’s been a long weekend. I’m beat. I’m going to go have sex with my wife and fall asleep. Breaking Bad will still be there tomorrow.”
The fact that advertisers rely SO heavily on Nielsens is absurd. To actually believe that only 2.3 or 2.9 million people watch Breaking Bad in the first place is dumb. Hell, there are probably 2.9 million people commenting on episode recaps of Breaking Bad around the web. Why do all glossy print magazines devote so much copy to shows that only get 3 million viewers, like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, instead of giving every cover to the cast of NCIS?
There’s a serious disconnect between Nielsen ratings and reality.
Here’s an interesting juxtaposition that demonstrates the point. Over on IMDb, Breaking Bad has a 9.4 user rating. NCIS has a 7.8 user rating. American Idol has a 4.4 user rating. But let’s put aside the ratings, and focus on the number of users that voted. Breaking Bad has had 100,000 users vote in four years. NCIS, the top rated scripted program in America, has had 20,000 people vote in eight years. American Idol, the highest rated show for the last decade, has had only 12,000 user votes. What does that say? At the very least, it says that Breaking Bad has 5 times more passionate, Internet savvy viewers than NCIS. Who is going to buy that iPad advertised during commercials? The passionate, Internet savvy user? Or the old guy that falls asleep halfway through a procedural?
Try a google search: Breaking Bad fetches 300 million results. NCIS fetched 47 million. Now, check Amazon: The first season of Breaking Bad is #61 among all DVD sales. The first season of NCIS is #1,719. What’s the biggest selling television episode on iTunes right now? This week’s episode of Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad was the fourth most downloaded show on iTunes in ALL of 2011. Has an episode of NCIS ever even broken the Top 50? Moreover, in the last six weeks, the fourth season of Breaking Bad has sold $10 million in DVDs.
There are probably dozens of metrics you could use, and in every single one of them except one — the Nielsen ratings — Breaking Bad would come out ahead. So tell me? Which is the more popular show? The one that you and all your friend watch? Or the one that Nielsen says is most popular?
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It’s never been an argument about what show is more popular though, has it? It’s about what show gets more ads seen by the most people, there’s no ads on Netflix or on DVD’s or iTunes downloads, which is all the networks care about.
But they get money for Netflix, maybe not syndication money, but something. And DVDs are a direct sales->money correlation.
The DVD’s go towards the parent companies like Sony or Warner Brothers though (I think) which doesn’t benefit the channels that air them (at least not as directly as advertisements)
Well it depends on the contract, honestly. In the modern TV landscape for a show like Breaking Bad, I find it impossible to believe that the network isn’t taking a cut out of the DVD sales. Maybe not for the first season but in the 2nd through the 4th they’re getting theirs.
The ratings don’t indicate the most popular shows, but the shows whose viewership is least likely to be able to use a DVR.
Omar, you know very little about how television works. The only way the network gets a piece of the DVD income is if the network is covering 100% of the production costs from day one — a financially brutal arrangement that most networks happily avoid, and which certainly is not the situation on BB. AMC pays around 95% of the production costs, and only when the episode is delivered. Sony, meanwhile, has been covering expenses for the last 12 months, plus making up the missing 5% of the production budget. Under no circumstances would Sony then generously share the DVD money with a partner who’s already minimized their financial exposure. The only way a network sees any DVD money is if they buy that participation from the studio by paying 100% of production costs out of pocket, which happens very, very infrequently. (The one well known exception to the above is The Walking Dead, which is produced in-house at AMC, but which came this close to bankrupting the company, thus illustrating why networks usually don’t serve as studio on their own shows.)
Wait, what’s a “breaking bad”?
Sonuvabitch, wrong thread.
Here’s the thing – Neilsen ratings have ceased to have anything to do with the “popularity” of a show. Their ratings are no longer a measure of how many people are watching a given show, they are a measure of how many people are watching the advertisements that air during a given show.
That is why advertisers rely so heavily on it – they don’t give a shit how many people watch the show two days later, or buy it on DVD, or from iTunes, or Torrent it, or talk about it on IMDb, because 99% of those viewers aren’t watching their ads. And as long as the networks rely on those advertisers to provide the income to pay for those shows, there’s no incentive for the system to change.
…or, you know, what SatanBigsby said.
It’s okay Stinky, I think you did it with a little more gusto.
this analysis is so retarded its painful. the nielsen’s very accurately monitor how many people watch a show live. the nielsen’s also monitor shitloads of other metrics. its a big company that provides lots of services. but when advertisers want to find out how many people watch a show live they ask nielsen and nielsen tells them. then the advertisers decide if they want to buy time on the show. thats it. its very simple. theres nothing stupid about how the advertisers, the programmers or neilsen operates. youre just far to dense to understand it.
Be careful throwing around words like “retarded” and “dense” in such grammatical nightmare.
While the post wasn’t the best argument against Neilsen ratings, they’re still “so retarded its painful.” They monitor such a small number of houses, the manner in which you rely on some braindead household that’s tuning in to more Big Bang Theory reruns than new episodes of Community is just stupid. We have digital boxes now, they could easily transmit what a viewer is watching anonymously without having to rely on some idiot walking up to their Neilsen box to make it known that they’re watching Big Brother. I don’t see the need for one small research sect when we could just factor in the real numbers of what everyones watching, as opposed to a tiny fraction of viewers multiplied out to get these numbers.
stallonewolf – theres a difference between grammatical errors and typos or lack of capitalization because i dont feel like proofing a blog comment. feel free to consider me retarded for it anyway tho.
satanbigsby – theres is absolutely nothing small about the sample size nielsen uses. and yes, there is plenty of other metrics to look at. this is being accounted for. if nielsen can collect that data and sell it, they will. again, theres no missing piece of the puzzle that only tv bloggers have discovered that tv execs and advertisers are ignoring. the nielsen ratings just happen to be worth the most money to network programming, which is nearly all ad supported. its worth less to cable channels and premium channels. theres no conspiracy.
Oh, its “very accurate,” is it? A sample size of 2% of American TV households is “very accurate?” What world do you live in?
The Nielsen ratings are ridiculous because of the way they measure viewing numbers. Yes, the channel is on the television, but that doesn’t mean the show is being watched (especially due to the average age of viewers for the network), and it doesn’t mean that those watching care at all about the advertisements. The Nielsen’s work by saying: Hey, NCIS gets 20 million viewers because X amount of households had it on and you can extrapolate. On the other hand, iTunes can say: Breaking Bad received X number of downloads, and this is the exact number.
If the Nielsen system existed in every cable box that was sold, it would be slightly better, but it’s not the best way to judge viewers.
Not to mention the fact that he compared the two shows in about six other ways the gauge popularity and non-advertiser monetary gains and Breaking Bad was the unanimous winner.
We’re not saying it’s a conspiracy, we’re saying it’s a stupid, outdated system that doesn’t accurately portray the viewing habits of the entire population.
i understand its counter intuitive but the ratio between number of people in a sample surveyed and the size of the population from which the sample is derived is irrelevant provided that the sample is representative of the population and that n=30 or more. the big caveat is that the sample is representative of the population. but if you look at nationwide surveys, they stop at around a couple thousand and the margin of error is only +/- 3%. so the nielsens survey more than enough people to get accurate ratings. that 2% number or whatever it is means nothing.
and yes, there are flaws for the traditional nielsen ratings. but the nielsen company, the advertisers and the programmers are all aware of them and take them into account when making business decisions. thats why nielsen offers other metrics to advertisers, why advertisers look at other metrics to determine if their campaigns are effective, and why programmers make decisions on myriad other factors.
The thing about Nielsen though is that the portion of the population they choose to include may not be representative, as they do just kind of walk up to people’s doors and ask a few qualifying questions. It’s not a comprehensive search for the optimal groups needed to provide good results.
They could only help themselves by increasing the amount of subjects, as it would allow for less impact to be placed on one single viewer who just leaves the tv on CBS while he reads a book or goes into another room (or whatever).
nielsen employs professional statisticians to administer their surveys. the information they sell to advertisers are reviewed by people who often have masters degrees or even PhDs. they are all aware of the inherent flaws of the data. they take into account these caveats and adjust their analysis accordingly. if there was a way for nielsens to get better data, theyd do it, least some competitor swoops in and steals their customers.
i know it sucks when shows like the big bang theory make more money than community, but the problem is people and their preferences, not the system.
“i understand its counter intuitive but the ratio between number of people in a sample surveyed and the size of the population from which the sample is derived is irrelevant provided that the sample is representative of the population and that n=30 or more. the big caveat is that the sample is representative of the population.”
That’s really where the problem is, though. The Nielsen sample group is clearly not representative of the population. They lose the benefit of random selection because it needs to be opted into, and because that opt-in is incredibly cumbersome and invasive. Without a randomly selected population, such a small sample size IS problematic, as it is likely more representative of the niche group that would actually deal with the various means of collection (pressing the button, keeping the journals, etc.) than anything else.
There is also the issue of how knowledge of the system changes viewing habits, but let’s not even get into that.
nielsen is a huge ass company that does way more than report one specific kind of tv ratings. they are aware of any possible flaw you can think of and a lot more that you don’t know about. they are measuring for and accounting for all the “problems” with sample size (tho there isn’t one) or selection bias. but hey, if you guys think you got it figured out, heres the nielsen jobs page. go revolutionize the industry [sites.nielsen.com]
Polls for candidates are not true representations they are taken as a way to test the chance of a candidate being voted into office more then a true representation. 2% of a population for a survey is a great sample size – but you cannot take what it says for granted so for Nielsen to claim that it is accurate is frankly crap. It is accurate in the sense that it has a great sample size but that it is opt-in and so then you have people having to go through the trouble of getting one, and if you leave the television on and go somewhere else they act like you watched all of that. It inherently has problems that is the issue.
A great man once said, you have to pay the Troll Toll to get into this boys hole.
“nielsen is a huge ass company that does way more than report one specific kind of tv ratings. they are aware of any possible flaw you can think of and a lot more that you don’t know about. they are measuring for and accounting for all the “problems” with sample size (tho there isn’t one) or selection bias. but hey, if you guys think you got it figured out, heres the nielsen jobs page. go revolutionize the industry”
Ah, so now they’re accounting for problems that don’t even exist! It’s so clear now. You came here with your C- in Stats 101 and claimed that nothing was wrong with a small sample size because they were presumably operating under the optimal conditions of statistical theory. We’ve pointed out that their methods are a very real barrier to reaching anything near a representative population, and you’ve retorted with, what? They’re professionals? Don’t hurt yourself, asshole.
I have no doubt that there are very intelligent people at Nielsen who are perfectly aware of the flaws of their data collection. I’m less likely to believe that that means those flaws are accounted for and studied in any meaningful way. So long as media buyers/sellers cling to Nielsen like their childhood blankets, Nielsen has no motivation to change their antiquated methods.
Christ, what the fuck am I reading here?
Fine, I’ll pay the fucking troll toll.
“when adverisers want to find out how many people watch a show live they ask nielsen and nielsen tells them.”
Oh, thanks a shit tonne for explaining it to us, Trusty McSimpleton, it’s all so fucking simple now. You’re the absolute fucking worst. I read all your blather and it amounts to “trust them, they get paid to do this”. Feel free to drink the kool aid, but don’t go splashing that piss on us.
no i said they (nielsen) are taking into account problems that neither you nor I are not aware of. not that the problems dont exist.
but going with your theory, that the nielsens are antiquated and inaccurate, and that they aren’t going to change anytime soon, and that you know why they are inaccurate and what happens in the collection process that produces those inaccuracies. this is a powerful assertion potentially worth a lot of money. nielsen itself is worth about $10 billion and has revenues of about $5 billion a year. surely one of neilsen’s competitors would be interested in taking a fat slice of that business just as im sure they’d be interested in hearing your revolutionary theories. i implore you to give them a call, explain your theories and help change the industry for the better so tv will stop producing schlock like dancing with the stars and more quality programming like breaking bad. best of luck!
ah clint you got me. i have no point. im just here to troll. everyone is right. nielsen just doesn’t sample enough people. there are also other very obvious flaws in their data collection process that we are all aware of but no one in the industry dares change. and that kind of knowledge is both a blessing and a curse. we know whats wrong with the industry, but no one does anything about it. its quite frustrating and i’m sorry for suggesting that anyone here knows less about a subject than the professionals employed therein.
i blame dustin for veering off the subject of alison brie’s cleavage and wading into the complicated and divisive topic neilsen ratings. thanks a lot dustin, you fucking asshole.
I think we can all agree the original post was nonsense
You’re an insult to Slovak hockey.
Yes, Nielsens are there to measure ratings of a show that actually has advertisements that people can’t skip. I can live with that as long as the people who make the shows also realize that we’re renting/buying/streaming the show in sufficient quantities to justify its existence. Heck, in my case I like to watch a show and then if I love it I end up buying it too, so they get me twice. Isn’t athat the kind of customer that a network should want?
That’s what makes deals like Arrested Development on Netflix so exciting, things are starting to change towards that facet of entertainment and shows that might not produce ad revenue can now be feasible and even popular.
Well, sure; people don’t watch NCIS because they actually like it. They watch it because it’s on, and the background noise reminds them of their grandchildren.
For the life of me I’ve never been able to figure out why people put so much faith into Lt. Frank Drebin’s rankings of television programs.
RIP Dr. Rumack
I’m curious as to how Viggle is going to play into the TV ratings equation. I’m also curious as to how Milhouse’s dream of winning things by watching TV turned into an actual business model.
You have to understand, the majority of America is comprised of mouth breathing, slobbering, idiots. Accept the fact that American Idol, NCIS and the Big Band Theory are going to be highly rated. They are made specifically for people that aren’t able to process cogent thoughts.
Smart, well done TV will always be lower rated because the target audience is a puny percentage of the population.
Full disclosure: I lerv me some NCIS, Storage Wars, etc.
Full disclosure: I would watch the f*ck out of Big Band Theory. I’m a big fan of Dizzy Gillespie.
While Neilsen ratings are flawed, don’t think for a minute that more people watch Breaking Bad than NCIS, or that it’s even close. The difference is that the shows that we all love here inspire passion, analysis and debate. I didn’t think anybody I knew watched 2 & 1/2 Men until the Charlie Sheen thing happened last year. It turned out nearly everybody I knew watched that pile of crap. It just didn’t merit discussion.
I’m just happy that AMC and FX have figured out a way to make money while producing quality television.
You’re right about the viewing numbers, but don’t forget to take into account the Alpha Consumer ratio. I’m willing to bet there are more 500K-1M a year households and early adopters watching Breaking Bad then there are watching NCIS.
If follwoing these ratings were the case we’d have Pawn Stars or some other Pawn*insert catchy title here* Show being the highest rated every week or some shenanigans similar. Break Bad is a fantastic show, end of story, period.
Back when I had DirecTV there was a way to see what the most popular shows were according to them currently being viewed nationally and in my region.
Many times it was the O’Reilly Factor.
Those Neilsen boys sound like a bunch of Nancies. Sitting around spying on folks watching TV
Hemingway’s Foyer – Your Last Place To Be A Man
http://www.hemingwaysfoyer.com
Really trying to run with that manly premise, eh?
This post reads like a sports fan complaining that his team would be much better if it weren’t for all the injuries.
“We have digital boxes now, they could easily transmit what a viewer is watching anonymously…”
“Big Black Dicks, Little White Chicks” brought to you by Kraft Mac ‘N Cheese
Don’t you mean Jergins?
I work in advertising. We don’t care totally about the Nielsen rating of the show, other than its a gives a ballpark of what the audience will be in the future.
We pay on what is called a “C3 Rating”:
C3 was the metric launched in 2007. C3 refers to the ratings for average commercial minutes in live programming plus three days of digital video recorder playback.
So I don’t care how many people watched the PROGRAM, I only pay for people who watched the COMMERCIAL and I’ll pay the network for the live broadcast and 3 days of DVR playback (90% of DVR playback comes in the first 3 days). What happened after 2007 was the ratings took a little hit and the price of the ad went up a little (the network counterbalancing). In 2008 ad prices shrunk (bad economy) but the C3 rating stayed in place (less eyeballs to sell) so the networks are starving for money which causes things like Community getting axed, reality TV growing, product placements, and everything that sucks in the world.
The networks charge an ADDITIONAL amount of money if I watch a show online (AMCTV.com or Hulu) because they don’t know how to roll the rating ups or manage their P&L. So they have TWO revenue streams (TV and online) for every TV show.
THE PROBLEM IS: Network execs ONLY look at the TV revenue as whether they keep a show on air. It is the networks fault, not the advertisers. The advertiser is looking to get their ad to the most people – the network is misusing Nielsen number to make programming decisions.
Seems like the two are inherently entwined though and the only way to truly improve the system would be to do away with the reliance on ads. They both rely on each other to make the shows, and neither seems to truly care about shows beyond whether or not you, the advertiser, will shell out money to make the network a success. You’re removed completely from the creative decision, but because Neilsen gets more ratings on less “sophisticated programming” (as NBC puts it), more ad money comes from shitty shows and so shitty shows persevere. Mediocrity would be admonished if the ads were trying to associate brands with programs that are intelligent and creative rather than ones that draw sheer numbers, but the dichotomy is too strong between network and ad revenue for that to be a feasible option.
Likely we’re on the brink of some major change in the next 5-10 years for this kind of thing, because it’s too easy to just cut out ads in your own personal viewing. For now the networks are just clutching to this dying system because money, but it’s just growing more and more obsolete.
@SatanBigsby Great Point, but I think you are being too idealistic. (but I don’t disagree) Ex: If I’m selling toothpaste, my audience is “people with teeth”. Its hard to justify paying a premium when you just need mass advertising.
I do think Nielsen misrepresents ratings. If everyone has a set top box that is digital – we should move to a period where we have a better understanding of who is watching what. If we could tie that with online ad tracking you could close that loop ad say “Show X has this many program views online + TV” then you could do a “interest” rating (like they do with movies where they track how many times the trailer has been viewed or social media outreach. Then each brand can use the combination of Reach + Interest to determine success.
So a high consideration product like an automotive company would say I want to run in a program that is just as highly engaged as highly watched, which toothpaste or toilet paper may put more weight on just how many people they reach.
PS – this is the smartest conversation on any blog comment section ever.
Yeah, this discussion beats the hell out of jaroslav’s rant above.
Absolutely 100% on the money here. Nielsen uses a sample size of 25,000 to represent 300,000,000. That is .0001% to represent the whole. Even with a proper margin of error, how can this be so highly regarded?
Ratings are fine in the sense that they can rank show popularity amongst measured viewers. My issue with them arises when theoretical notions are presented as fact, such as “100,000 viewers simultaneously turned the channel”. Well, no. A handful of people did, and you multiplied that number with the notion that someones age/gender/race/occupation/part of the country they live in, means that they did the exact same thing, at the exact same time, because apparently we are all a bunch of drones that act and react in unison, as predetermined by the above characteristics. Sorry, I dont agree with it.
PS – i just wrote some seriously nerdy business stuff signed in as this guy ([www.iwatchstuff.com]) from “You Can’t Do That On Television”
I love the internet sometimes.
Nielsen Ratings were cool in the 60′s, when door to door insurance salesmen existed. Things have gotten a little more innovative since then, but they are still on their lazy arse using the same methods to collect data…Google TV Advertising has real user data!
Google TV advertising is beyond garbage. They literally have under 1MM households.
Basically every cable provider gets a % of a show’s inventory (thats where you see local TV spots). So Dish Network gets a small % of ad space to sell.
What they can’t sell – they give to Google TV.
Its nothing right now.
Since when is reaching your target audience cost effectively garbage? At least I know someone is actually watching the ad, and when they are no longer engaged.
Wait, where did you get the Aaron Price is Right gif? Is there a whole episode out there?
When I had a Nielsen box we were picked at random and the woman who did the interview noted that we weren’t the usual demographic that was selected. I did find out a lot of the stuff that Nielsen’s trying to do like internet, but how often do you think monitoring computer activity is going to be something anyone in a relevant demographic is going to go for?
They’re aware of the problem but just can’t seem to keep up with technology.
Why does this kind of drop never happen to Big Bang Theory?
Kudos to Dustin for a great post. And @jaroslav – while you make some interesting points, it’s mostly wrapped up in an ad hominum attack and a bogus appeal to authority argument. Simple rebuttal to your main bull-shit premise: yeah and S&P and Moody’s (companies as big as Neilsen) had rooms full of stats PhDs paid to analyze american household behavior in mortgage payment, based on decent sized samples. HOW’D THAT F***ing WORK OUT? If I take a crap in a box and stamp a statistical analysis on it, you’re still just left with a piece of crap in a box.
Bob, you’re my spirit animal.
The problem here is people still act like internet popularity is a reflection of real world popularity. Rarely do the two meet. Snakes on a Plane anyone?
Snakes On a Plane’s internet popularity happened before the movie came out or even finished filming. The movie itself wasn’t popular, but the *idea* that a no-kidding movie with that title starring Samuel L Jackson was something a lot of people found hilarious and enjoyed discussing and hyping. Much in the same way as David Hasselhoff.
The problem was that the studio and media figured that would translate into ticket sales. It’s a completely different thing.
What I’m saying is, while I agree that internet popularity and real world popularity can be different things, Snakes On a Plane has nothing to do with that argument and was a poor example, sir.
The lack of effort put into this post is just obscene. Yes, Breaking Bad’s LIVE rating has gone down since the first episode. Yes, it’s most likely because of DVR usage – which is why Nielsen ratings are captures as live, live+same day viewing, live+3 days of viewing and live+7 days of viewing to account for DVR. FYI that’s also why the standard for advertisers is the rating of the commercial live and with 3 days of DVR – and yes they can tell if a viewer opts to fast forward through the commercials and then don’t count them. A simple call to Nielsen or even a look on wikipedia would have told you this.
Just to cure my curiosity, how many of you work/have worked in the tv industry?