The Ratings

After reading chapter nine,"Television," in the textbook, I decided to write a blog about the ratings system. First, I found it very interesting how there were actually two aspects of the rating system. According to Mass Media in a Changing World, these aspects are the rating and the share. The rating is the percentage of all homes with televisions that are on at a certain time of day and tuned to a particular station, where a share is the percentage of homes which the television is in use, and on a certain station. Since the ratings take their data from all homes with a television, whether it is turned on or not, the ratings number is usually smaller than the share number.

While reading the section on ratings I wondered what types of programs were the most popular in America, today. In order to find the answers, i turned to the resources of the most recognized rating company, Nielsen Media Research. While reading about the Nielsen system in the textbook, I thought it was very interesting how the ratings data is collected. The basic idea is that meters are installed in the television sets of 10,000 randomly chosen households, to monitor which stations are being viewed at any hour of the day. The system is also equipped with a device also detects which member of the family is watching the station through a system close to that of a time clock. They let the device know when they start viewing, and again when they are done.

After grasping the main idea of how the concept worked, i looked to the Nielsen Media Research website to obtain the ratings for both broadcast television, as well as cable television for the week of October 15,2007. According to the results for broadcast television the top five were:CSI, Dancing With the Stars, Grey's Anatomy, FOX MLB ALCS Game 7, and Dancing With the Stars(the results show). After looking at the top five I thought it made sense, as it was a mixture of reality television, mystery, drama, and sports. Also, I think it is worthy to note that half of the top ten shows are shown on ABC, four on CBS, and only one on FOX. I believe this probably gives great insight to stations on what types of shows they should be airing for more viewers, as well as advertisers who may be trying to decide on what time of day, as well as what station they are going to advertise on. Besides broadcast television, I was also curious to find the results for cable television. The top five programs for the week of October 15, 2007 being: NFL Regular Season L(Giants/Falcons), Hannah Montana,Law & Order:CI(Orig), College Ftbl-Sat Prime L(Auburn/LSU), and Wizards of Waverly Place. These ratings were interesting to me as two of the top five were football games, two were children's programs, and only one was a drama.

Also, three stations dominated the top ten: USA, ESPN, and Disney. This really gives insight into which programs households are truly interested in viewing in society today.
From these results I also found it easy to see why there is controversy over the Nielsen Media Research rating system today. Many are concerned with the fact that these ratings are only taken from households and do not take into account dorm rooms, bars, or hotels, all places of high viewing. If these were taken into account the four of the top ten rated programs on cable may have been something besides children's shows on the Disney Channel.

Overall, I believe the Nielsen rating system is beneficial for a television station's success, as well as serving the interests of advertisers. However, the system should be extended to other building including: college dorms, bars, and hotels, to get a true measure of which programs and stations are the most watched in America.