How do shows really rate?

Recently, the entertainment industry was told of a small glitch in the TV ratings system in the U.S. 

Now, when it comes to technology, we’re all used to errors and technical issues creeping up.  (Just ask anyone in my office who’s had to “fix” my computer on a weekly basis.)

But despite Nielsen’s efforts to downplay the problem, this was a doozy.

To give you a little background, Nielsen measures viewership of television programs. 

Those ratings are used to assess how much advertisers should pay for their commercials to run during a particular TV show.
The higher the rating, the more expensive the commercial. 

If the rating is too low, the show won’t make enough airtime sales to justify the cost of production each week. This leads to cancellation of the show and more importantly, affects hundreds of jobs.

So I’m scratching my head when Nielsen quietly informed the industry that a technical glitch in their program had been incorrectly allocating ratings to the wrong shows since, oh, March. 

But not to worry. Most of the ratings would not be affected that much.

Say what?

Since March, numerous shows have been cancelled – I’m still not over the critically acclaimed Surviving Jack and Enlisted – and audiences had to endure an entire summer of Under the Dome. Extant was renewed. Resurrection returned this fall. 

Is there no end to the insanity?

And what tipped them off that something might be amiss?  Nielsen’s own internal quality control checks?  No. 

CBS’s chief research officer noticed that ABC’s Dancing with the Stars showed an increase in ratings in September even during weeks when it was pre-empted in two markets due to NFL games. 

Somehow, I doubt there were that many viewers eagerly anticipating Alfonso Ribiero’s performance of “The Carlton.”  (Although, yes, I was one of them.)

So what happened?  The ratings program was calculating its early “fast national” numbers but as usual, some sources of viewership were left unidentified. 

Those numbers are supposed to be properly identified and tabulated later.  However, the program just applied them to ABC. “That resulted in ABC getting a big bump.” 

You think?

Nielsen has promised to reprocess the data as far back as Aug. 18.  But when you consider the millions of dollars in revenue at thousands of American stations that were affected by seven months of glitchy data, is this enough?

And why should we care about Nielsen’s problems in the U.S.? 

Here in Canada, we’re entering our sweeps ratings period when our media measurement service will be contacting viewers. 
You might have seen or heard the commercials. No longer BBM, the company contacting you for your input is called Numeris. 

And Numeris is partnered with those technological wizards south of the border for our major markets, although they work independently for smaller regions like Thunder Bay. 

A lot of jobs depend on these numbers.  So please answer their questions if they call you. 

But feel free to ask a few of your own.