September 4, 2014 • 42 mins
Ever wonder why some great shows go off the air after a season or less? Blame it on the Nielsen company, which has for more than 60 years been the almost exclusive decider of what goes and what stays on TV.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuckers Bryant, and there's Jerry W.
Jerre Rowland. Actually, Jerry has been canceled, okay, due to
(00:22):
low ratings. You know it's funny, is um. Jerry has
been portrayed on television and a TV show that was
canceled due to poor ratings. Poor ratings. That was our show.
That was our show. We had a television show once.
It was called Stuff you should Know. It was a
slightly fictionalized version of our life, our work life. We
(00:43):
made a sitcom. Yeah we did. It's pretty cool and
a lot of people loved it, and a lot of
people are like, what in the world did you do
it that way for? So that a lot it's like
basically ten and ten. Oh, yeah, you're referring to the
tony people who've seen that show. Yeah, actually we'll get
to that at all. But we um, we know a
little bit about how TV ratings work because of that,
(01:05):
and uh, in some ways I believe we're a victim
of the antiquated system that is the Nielsen TV ratings. Now, dude,
it's it's it's antiquated, it's changing. I do not disagree
with the antiquated part. What I do disagree with is
that had it been up to date, I think it
(01:26):
would have had zero impact on our success. I don't know, man,
I will say this to the people out there, what um.
What the network did was they looked only at one number,
which is the amount of people that sat down in
front of their television set on a Saturday night live
at ten pm to watch our show. They did not
(01:47):
count things that we'll talk about, like online streaming or
DVR um or anything like that, which is what makes
it antiquated. Because it's it's changing. Man. People aren't watching
TV like they used to. But they're basing a lot
of these uh decisions on a system that was designed
in the nineteen fifties. So let's go back, man. It
(02:09):
goes back even further than that, back in three the A. C.
Nielsen Company started. At the time, people who were broadcasting
radio wanted to know what people were listening to. So
there are a lot of companies that would telephone up
family at random and say, say, fella, what are you
(02:30):
listening to right now? On the old Victor Rola, the
Amazing adventure A. And uh, he'd say, hey, thanks a lot,
bub talk to you later, and they'd hang up a
nickel for your trouble, they wish, because we're talking depression
at this time. Um well not later on, they wished
the head a nickel. Here's a chicken for your pot.
(02:51):
That's a Hoover reference. Man, you don't get those two
often try to bust him out. So the Nielsen Company said,
that's all finding good. That's great that you guys are
figuring out what people are listening to, but we have
something even better because we are a technological powerhouse. And
what they did was they randomly picked some families around
America and said, say, can we put this cool recording
(03:15):
device in your home near your radio and it will
record what you're listening to at any given time, and
then we'll send technicians out to pick it up from
time to time to get the information off of it,
and then bring it back so we can keep recording it.
And family said sure, and the Nielsen Company's domination of
broadcast ratings was sealed. After that point, everybody from every
(03:39):
competitor they had was just peanuts compared to the Nielsen Company,
so much so that when you hear TV ratings, it's
synonymous with Nielsen ratings, very much like Kleenex and UH
facial tissue are one and the same same thing, thanks
to Nielsen's technological powerhouse. The irony of it, though, is
(04:00):
once they started installing those boxes in the twenties or thirties,
and then they moved on to television sets, the innovation,
I mean they innovated somewhat fundamentally principally, it remained the
same until a year or two ago. Yeah, and they're not, Um,
we'll get into all the hardware of the the hardware
(04:21):
side of how it works. But what they did in
n with send actual little diaries that you would fill
out and pencil and send back. And they still do
that today in two thousand fourteen, even though in two
thousand six they said they were going to stop. They
still send those little diaries. And you get a little
diary in the mail with five one dollar bills really
(04:42):
in the envelope for your troubles, and they look like
the modern nickel, Yeah exactly. And they rely on lazy,
dishonest people to fill out this card and mail it
back and then go spend that five dollars on a
on a grande a latte. It would have gotten a
lot more. Oh man, you could have bought a car.
(05:04):
But but that is the diary version. What UM and
and the networks and advertisers have never liked the diary version.
They still don't know. But it's what's called sweep sweek,
which is hard to say. That's right, and we'll get
it sweeps in a second. But um what they mainly
like to rely on are two different electronic hardware methods
(05:25):
UM the set meters as in TV set and people meters.
And right now they have by they plan to have
more than sixty TV set meters. And this is just
for the US and Canada, by the way, because everyone
else's TV is weird. Yeah, simon, do you ever watched
(05:45):
TV in different countries when you're traveling and stuff? Yes,
and it is so much fun. It is fun. But
after a while you're like, I really miss American TV. Yeah,
but I mean, if you're traveling abroad, you shouldn't be
watching a whole lot of TV. Exact, it's like late
night in the hotel. It's one of but it's one
of the great plus is as you're just like, I
don't feel like watching this, will go out and see
the site instead. Yeah. I think I was in Belgium
watching TV with my buddy Brett years and years ago,
(06:08):
and uh that was translated in English and subtitles and
one of the characters said something and I guess I
don't know if it was Flemish, and the other guy
just looked and said I and it said me too.
So we still say that today when we're responding me
to do each other, we'll go I all those years later.
So anyway, Um, the set, yeah, I said there was
(06:32):
in thirty one uh markets, TV markets, and then there
are about thirty five thousand, I believe. Now people meeters
in those homes, I'm sorry, in about twenty homes, and
those people meeters are more specific because you can have
(06:54):
three people meeters in one house. We want to see
what little Susie's watching, We want to see what her
brother Randy's watching, and they won't see what her dad
watches after everyone's gone to bed. Yeah, so each one
of them will have their own little people meter that
they'll turn on. And I always thought that these things
were connected to your television like your cable box and
it just kind of read the information, but they're actually
(07:16):
listening devices. Isn't that weird? Totally blew my mind. So basically,
the podcast the way that the way that Nielsen figures
out what TV show you're talking to is because they
have a device that's connected to the Internet that um
is eaves dropping on your TV. And they just in
(07:36):
two thousand and six finally got to the point where
they perfected this technology, and they have codes that broadcasters,
the networks and the local affiliates have to put in
to their audio stream, the audio video stream that the
audio stream is it just audio, yeah, but they're trying
to come up with the video version. So basically, there's
(07:57):
a a sound, there's a frequency that you can't hear.
I don't even think your dog can hear it, but
it comes through your TV and your Nielsen box can
hear it. And it's a it's basically an audio fingerprint
for a show. And when the Nielsen box here's that audio,
it can be like, oh, well, they're watching good Times
right now, that's funny. I was just thinking that Good Times, yeah,
(08:20):
and then I was like, no, let should say Three's
Company instead. It depends, and then he said good Times.
Although if you watch good Times long enough, there's an
episode of Three's Company coming on eventually on that channel.
That's I think good Times and maybe my favorite all
time theme song. That's a good one. Oh man, it's
so good, it's ridiculous. Did I tell you Henry Mancini
did the the What's Happening? Theme song? Yes? What episode
(08:44):
is that? In just a few ago it was number
stations because the sound that the shortwave thing. So uh,
That's how Nielsen has been figuring out what people are watching,
which is mind blowing. It's also if it's a little backwards, yeah,
it may be emblematic of a larger systematic resistance towards
(09:10):
technological improvement. Yeah. Or if it seems a little small
as far as the sample pool goes, Umi, it is.
But what they do is they extrapolate that number, just
like polsters do, and they say, well, this these are
average markets, these are average families. Um so if these
eventually sixty TV sets are watching this, we can pull
(09:32):
that out and and do some sort of They probably
do it on a chalkboard in a room. There's this
one guy who has the piece of chalk and the
extrapolate sets out and says, well, this is what America
is watching, which always has bugged me, especially when you
have a TV show that gets canceled. It is because
it all comes down to just how representative is your sample.
(09:53):
So there's six TV sets there, sixty by two thoften
right now in two thous in fourteen may have two
thousand fourteen. There are a hundred and sixteen point three
million TV set from the US. So this is a
very small sample size. But if the guy with the
chalk um Bert can can come up with a very
(10:13):
good representative portion of the US, Like there's this many
UM divorced Hispanic families, there's this many UM gay Asian households.
There's like this many you know, Mitt Romney voters, and
like they take all these guys and put them together
and it's a clear cross section of America. That's America, baby.
(10:36):
You should be able to extrapolate pretty pretty well from that.
That's true. It just all depends on how good their
statisticians are, that's right. And they do audits over the
years and quality checks of course, and compare ratings from
different samples. So it's not like they just said, yeah,
I saw we're doing it, although they sort of do that,
(10:57):
but they do they do quality checks of course. Yeah.
One of the problems is like there's been so few
challenges from outside competition that Nielsen can do whatever it wants,
and it's so powerful that it literally has the entire
television industry at its feet. It decides what rating a
TV show gets, and ultimately, the whole point to all
(11:19):
of this stuff, the TV ratings in general, is so
that networks and their local affiliates can set advertising rates
for advertisers. There's seventy eight billion dollars at stake. That's
the advertising spent in a year on television, and it
all comes down to what rating. Nielsen, with the representative
(11:41):
sample and their audio eavesdropping boxes and their five dollar
bills in a paper diary, decide that your TV show got.
That's right. That's the dirty little secret is that they
don't care how many people are watching that TV show.
They care about how many people are watching the commercials. Yeah,
that's really what they're looking at, and more specifically, what demographic,
(12:04):
which is why I don't think we mentioned why the
people meters are so valuable, because they want to get
that specific demo so they can show advertisers eighteen to
forty nine year olds, they spend a ton of money
and they're watching uh, they're watching Community, but no one
else is, so will cancel Community, which is kind of crazy,
as we'll see in a little a little while. Yeah,
(12:25):
but um, just quickly let me go over. I think
most people know this. But if you've got a half
hour TV show and um, you're gonna have twenty two
minutes of UH TV show, then you're gonna have eight
minutes of commercial. Six of those are national ads sold
by the network, and then your local affiliate. That's where
you're gonna get your awesome commercials. The Wolf two minutes
(12:46):
worth or crazy Eddie. I remember it was big up
in the Northeast and then so this is two thousand
and six. I couldn't find one recently, but back in
two thousand and six, you if you're buying a commercial
slot from a local affiliate, you're gonna pay about dollars
to two thousand dollars depending on This is during the daytime.
This isn't like three am, depending on what show. So
(13:06):
like back when Oprah was on, you could get a
thirty second spot for ninety bucks you could. Yeah, you
could also pay up to two thousand dollars for it,
and then apparently you're going to double that for um
a national ad for a thirty second spot during the day,
which isn't just not outlandish. Well that's how crazy Eddie.
(13:27):
I mean, yeah, or the wolf Man. They don't have
a ton of money. Although I don't know, the wolf
Man wore a lot of jewelry. For those of you
who don't know who the Wolfman is, we understand because
you probably didn't live in Atlanta. Yeah, I bet it
was Southeast I bet it was on like WTVS and stuff.
All you have to do is go type in Wolfman, Donna,
(13:48):
gallery furniture into the YouTube's and it will show you
some classic gallery furniture ads. Or just type in, hey,
ask for the Wolfman. No, ask for Donna. I don't
remember that part. What you don't remember Donna, his daughter
with the hair. The whole premise of the ad, wanted
you to come see him, and she'd say, Hey, ask
(14:09):
for the Wolfman. She'd go no, ask for Donna. She'd
always get his goat. All right, So let's take a
break here and then we'll talk about you mentioned Sweeps
Week and we'll talk about that right after this. Yeah,
we will, all right, sweeps Everyone's heard it. Um it
is a bit. Yeah, everyone hears about you know this
(14:29):
is sweeps Weeks. That's when well, well we'll tell you
what it is. This is the fact that the podcast
to me what sweets Week? Yeah, where it came from
and why it exists. Well, in when they started sending
out those TV diaries and uh, they made a geographic
sweep starting in the northeast, across the country from east
(14:49):
to west, and they collected the little booklets and those
were our first reportings of TV writings. So before they
had they had the eaves offing boxes that they were using.
But it was basically like, um, this this These are
I think maybe up the twenty thousand households at one
point in the major markets. There's the great thing about
(15:13):
the paper diaries is they could go into local markets,
smaller markets and find out not just what you know,
the people in New York or l A or Chicago
were watching, but what the people in you know, Santa
Fe were watching too, or you know, Fort Lauderdale. Those
are saying, how does it play in Santa Fe? Sheboygan
or something probably or Walla, Walla, I can't remember. It
(15:37):
may have been a movie thing too, but that there's
an industry saying, how does it play in the city.
It's got a rhyme because that's what matters, you know.
Of course New York, in l A and the major
markets are going to consume. Uh. They want to know
what your average household wants to see, right, And this
is this is the first time that anyone had ever
taken a really comprehensive snapshot of what America was watching
(16:01):
in a given week. And so they said, hey, this
worked really well. We're gonna start doing this every year.
We're gonna have what's now called a sweep Sweek and
it's going to be on this week. And so the
TV executive said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute,
sweep Sweek, this is what we're gonna start setting our
advertising rates against. And it's gonna be this week, and
I'm going to do the craziest stuff I can think
(16:24):
of to get ratings as as big and wide as
I possibly can grab on that week. And that is
where sweep Sweek came from. And we have seen some
pretty interesting things as a result of sweeps week. Yeah,
there's um a great tradition of stunt casting during sweeps week.
Justin Bieber will show up on c S. I. I
(16:44):
didn't see that one to do, and I don't watch
that show, and if I did, I would have punched
my TV if he showed up on it. Um, if
you're gonna shoot JR, You're gonna do it during sweep sweek.
Oh yeah. The late night talk shows are gonna load
up their their biggest A list guest during sweeps week.
E R did a live show. Yes, I've actually watched
that one, and I wasn't an e R fan. I
(17:05):
just wanted to see if they could pull it off. Right.
It's pretty cool. Ellen used to have a sitcom based
on her life and she came out on that show
during sweep Sweell. Yeah, that's right. And very famously, there
was a not one, not two, but thrice part Happy
Days where Fonzie jumps the shark on water skis that
(17:25):
sweep that happened during sweep sweek. Wow, that's a sweeps failure. Well,
I'll know if people watched it. Yeah. I don't guess
you can call it a failure because that's probably as iconic. Yeah,
it's part of the lexicon. Now do you remember an
Arrested development where Henry Winkler jumps over Shark Classic. Uh,
these days, sweep Sweek is actually sixteen weeks because they
(17:50):
have I don't know if but narrowed it down. They
broadened it out to four four week periods in November
of February, May and July, and they still old trot
out uh special things for sweeps but it's not it
definitely doesn't have the teeth that it used to because
the way that people consume media these days, which we're
gonna you know, start getting into, so not it doesn't
(18:12):
have the teeth that it used to. And and as
a result, um, a lot of networks have kind of stopped,
like you said, doing the stunt casting and that kind
of stuff. But it's still as a um um, it's
still basically holding broadcast TV hostage because that is still
what advertisers want to see, Well, what are your ratings
(18:33):
during sweeps Week? And that's what they set their ad
rates against. So the fact that there are these four
month long sweeps weeks um means that the broadcasters have
to follow the normal fall the summer broadcast model with
reruns in between. Yeah, and this is for for NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox,
(18:55):
like the major broadcast networks non cable networks, which is
a completely dying beast. Yeah, because they rely exclusively on advertising,
and cable has been eating their lunch because advertising has
been going down. It looks like it's already peaked. It's
still seventy eight million dollars billion billion. Yes, you're right,
(19:17):
but cable takes a huge substantial portion of that in advertising.
But then even when advertising rates go down, cable still
survives because cable makes money off of subscriber fees and
transmission fees to Yeah, exactly, which is why a cable
has a big leg up. And also they can um
they don't have a traditional television season. They can release
(19:40):
stuff all year long and you can binge watch it. Yeah,
which is happening. That's that's the new model. So, like
we said, for many years, um Nielsen was just kind
of as this one Wired article, the Nielsen family is
dead put it. It was in a torpor. And the
first thing that really per um, the first thing that
(20:01):
really roused um Nielsen was DVRs Because when DVRs came along,
the advertising industry was like, oh god, people can fast
forward through ads now like they've always dreamed of doing
exactly now they can, And it was the basically the
television apocalypse, and that didn't pan out because advertisers figured
(20:22):
out that, yeah, people can ever we can pass forward
two ads. But there's ways to still get your message
across at sixteen time speed. You can do things called
pop busters where you use the actors or the look
or the set of the TV show that you're advertising
within to make them think like the show just came
back on and you caught them. Because it's really an
ad um there's all sorts of stuff you can do,
(20:43):
so it hasn't been an advertising apocalypse. And as a result,
because DVRs are clearly clearly here to stay and have
been since you know, the early two thousands, um Nielsen
has had to kind of finally be like, Okay, we
need to innovate a little bit and figure out how
to include DVR because not everybody's sitting down at eight
o'clock on a Monday night and watching Murder. She wrote,
(21:06):
nobody is man. I watched a couple of episodes the
other night. I love that show. I've never seen one episode.
What I know, man, it is good? Is it's good?
Another thing too? Uh? Just the backtrack is I've noticed
lately is UM, you're on demand watching, which a lot
of cable companies. I'm a Comcast person by because I'm
(21:30):
forced to be. UM. A lot of the the on
demand shows now within the first like a couple of
weeks that they're available, you can't fast forward through. Oh yeah,
like you hit the fast forward button and a little
null sign comes up and says, sorry, you're gonna have
to sit through this. The DVR, I guess the fact
(21:52):
that the DVR is connected to the internet, yeah, and
is because it's getting show information that the actual show
is being recorded on your physical hard drive. I'm sure
there's cloud DVR recorders or whatever, but for the most part,
there's a hard drive that's recording shows onto your DVR.
And then the other capability is that it is connected
(22:13):
to the Internet, which is where it gets show information
and all that stuff to present to you. But the Internet,
as you may have figured out by now, is a
two way streak. Not only can information be downloaded to
your home, it can be uploaded and that includes your preferences.
How what shows you watch, how often you watch them
when you watch them, And so all of a sudden,
(22:34):
the DVR companies are like, hey, Nielsen's giving you guys,
like eight pm on NBC ratings. We've got all of
these other ratings that they're not taking into account that
you can get from us. Not only that, but they
can actually tell when you're pausing your TV because the
infamous nip slip hate even saying those words, uh, and
(22:56):
the two thousand four Super Bowl with Janet Jackson, they uh,
TiVo the people are DVR company, although the people still
use TVO. They probably do. I don't know. It's like
every local cable company has around d v R now
it seems like it. But um, they were able to
say that was the most replayed clip uh in the
history of TVO up into that point was people pausing
(23:16):
and rewinding. That's stupid, stupid stunt, right, But like you
were saying, they've now decided, um, but at least some
networks have decided they're gonna start counting. Um. What's called
the DVR I'm so better the DVR plus system, which
is DVR UM live plus Same Day. Yeah, that's the
(23:37):
Nielsen method. Live plus three days or Live plus three
and then Live plus seven, which is obviously Live plus
same days if you just watch it later that night.
Um plus three is three days within three days, and
then seven is within that week. And I'm staying like,
conflicting information out there. Seems like either they they now
have basically just Live plus Live plus three, which is
(24:00):
um like their main measurement. Well, what matters is what
the advertisers say is what we care about. Like, you
can have Live plus twenty, but if the advertisers are like,
we don't care about Live plus twenty, that doesn't do
anything for us exactly, It's true, but it sounds like
you're right. Like at one point they tried to say
that Live plus same Day is basically the same thing
(24:20):
Nielsen did and the advertising and they wanted to lump
it together with Live and and the advertisers like, no,
that's really not the same because of the fast forwarding thing. Yeah,
so let's at least separate these numbers out so we
can look at it all as individually. Yeah. Um, the
thing is is the people who are watching TV, you know,
I EU and I UM, we don't care what the
(24:43):
advertisers think. And they basically just need to keep up
with our viewing habits, which are changing radically. Yeah, the
broadcast networks have lost seventeen percent of the most coveted
demographic eighteen to forty nine year olds between two thousand
and twelve and two thousand just gone. Part of that
(25:04):
is because the networks put out terrible, terrible stuff, although
so did the cable networks these days too. But another
part of it is because broadcast is stuck in this
sweep weeks sweeps week um certain time and on a
certain day format that has been in forever since the fifties,
(25:26):
and they're being basically held hostage by Nielsen's ratings. So
there's been a real push to advance technologically and to
start taking into account these other myriad ways that people
consume television and uh, getting a clear picture of what
an audience is doing, and the fact that it's now
(25:48):
computer based and we have ways of tracking computers. Really,
broadcasters are as excited as ever and we just have
to figure out how to do it. And we'll talk
about how they're trying to figure out how to do
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com slash stuff offer code stuff. Well, one thing before
we get to the internet, um that we haven't mentioned
(27:39):
yet is you might hear in UH TV parlance the
word share as opposed to rating. Uh. And what that
is is is a share is how many people are
watching a certain TV show that are actually watching TV. UM.
A rating is just how many people are watching it,
But the share is how many people what share of
(27:59):
people are watching a show that are watching something other
people like? If your TV is off, it doesn't count.
Know that your share numbers always gonna be higher. Yeah
it is. But the rating is the the number of
people watching it compared to the entire population of America,
right exactly for Canada. Yeah, I keep forgeting about Canada.
They steal our shows. UM. So now we're onto the
(28:22):
the newest development. Um DVRs kind of threw a wrench
in the plans, but they're trying to take those into
account and they've they've been pretty successful, it seems like
with that. Yeah, once they settle on what they all
agree is a valid thing measurement, Yeah, valid measurement. Um.
But now, of course, people are consuming TV online more
than ever, on their laptops, on their tablets, their mobile devices.
(28:45):
Can throw out some figures for you real quick, Chuck,
Please consider this A hundred and sixteen million television sets
in the United States. There's a hundred and thirteen million tablets, Yeah,
a hundred and sixty six million smartphones, and two hundred
and forty three million Internet connected computers, double the amount
(29:06):
of televisions in the US. And people are watching stuff
whenever they want, however they want on this and as
it stands right now, Nielsen is still trying to figure
out how the heck they can most effectively track these people. Yeah, well,
this is the the first year, uh, this fall TV
season will be the very first year that uh, they're
(29:28):
gonna supposedly have a across the board measurement system with
TV ratings that will include viewership on everything including your
mobile device. And it's forced some innovation too, because the
Nielsen can't just say, oh, well, we'll add like an
eavesdropper onto your tablet or your smartphone because it will
drain your battery. Yeah, what it will probably be is
(29:50):
a is a third party app or piece of software.
And it makes sense. It seems like it would be
easier than ever to track watching habits in the near future. Okay,
it is. If your Google, if you're Nielsen, and you've
been basically caught off guard by this since you know,
you maybe started thinking about this in two thousand and eleven,
then you're in deep trouble. There's a very very effective
(30:12):
way of tracking computer use, Chuck, and it's called cookies.
And cookies have been around forever and they've gotten to
the point now where they can plant cookies on your tablet,
your smartphone, your computer. However, you have all these things
you use, and after a while, just from paying attention
to the data they they they're the algorithm will basically say,
(30:35):
I think these three cookies over here are the same person,
and they'll put them together and all of a sudden,
what was once three users is now one and the
picture is that much clear of who Binge watched Season
two of True Blood this week. You know. So there's
cookies out there and they've been around for a while,
(30:56):
and they're very easy to get and very easy to use.
And this is what New Wilson's up against. Yeah, and
you may be saying yourself, well, who cares how people
are watching it if it's online or on TV. But
what matters is advertisers. Uh. If you've noticed if you
watch shows online, like with Hulu or something, they're different commercials.
(31:16):
You're not seeing the same stuff. And they still can't
even decide now what to count because they don't want to. Uh.
You know, if if Brad Pitt does a pepsi commercial,
he probably has it in his contract. Well, this can
only run on on network on air TV in Thailand.
Don't don't show me on Hulu. I don't want my
(31:38):
commercial running online. If I show up in South Korea,
you owe me ten million dollars. That's right. So they
have a lot of control on how their images are seen.
Or maybe they maybe there's an awesome commercial that licensed,
Um the who's won't get fooled again, it's only licensed
for television. They can't show that same commercial online, so
(31:58):
you're gonna have to show what some advertisers or or
shows or networks might consider uh substandard ad, so they
don't want to count that as a view. Yeah, and
the same applies to TV shows to there there might
be actors, writers that are just for on air and
not for video distribution or um, just like with the ads.
(32:19):
So it seems to me like the the there's it's
not just Nielsen's up against this. The networks are still
trying to figure out things like TV everywhere, Like they
want you to be able to watch TV everywhere you
are at all times, because then they can serve you
ads everywhere at all times and they can charge for
those kind of things. But they can't say how to
(32:40):
track this yet one and not everything's cleared for all
forms of media to the other problem with online viewing
is that they don't have that all important demographic detail
okay again though or they could though if they start
using cookies, then they've got it right there. They that
this is what advertisers are salvating over, like hyper targeted ads.
(33:02):
So like imagine if you and I are watching the
same like classic episode a Saturday Night Live and I'm
watching on my computer, you're watching on your computer. We're
sitting right next to each other. We pressed play at
the same time, the ad break gets to the same
spot at the same time, and then boom, two different
ads come up. Yeah, I get Team because I'm in
my forties. You get a Ferrari ad because you're five
(33:23):
or six years young. Exactly, That's exactly what would happen to.
So this is what advertisers want, like that level of targeted.
But the Nielsen Company is still dominating. If they can
catch up, the Nielsen Company will be around for another
fifty hundred years. But again, they're up against cookie tracking
right now. And if somebody can come along and be like,
hey man, we've got all of your second screen data
(33:46):
you could ever want, then again Nielsen is in big trouble.
Well there, our company is trying to do that. There's
one called calm Score that says they can offer a
single metric that it shows who's watching television across a
single platform. You can think of time shifted, on demand, streaming, live,
whatever calm scores is, they can do it. Uh. NBC
(34:09):
has signed up with them and they haven't dropped Nielsen.
You know, they're just spending more money to try and
get better tracking. Uh. There's another company. They did that
in the two thousand fourteen Socy Olympics, right was at
the trial. Yeah, I think that's when they rolled it out.
Supposedly was super successful. Yeah, that's what they said. Um.
And then there's another one called ring Track that uh.
They their origins were just a video cassette distributor, but
(34:34):
they realized that that was going nowhere in two thousand
fourteen even worse. Yeah, they diversified into TV ratings and
they use cable set top boxes and right now have
deals with seventy networks and three D TV stations and
basically the competition. David Poltrak, he's a chief research officer
(34:55):
for CBS Corporation, said that it's the competition on the
research front is the most intense it's ever been and
pretty exciting time. Yeah. And Nielsen actually those um FTC
antitrust settlement where I think the way I understand it
is that Nielsen was using uh, they they acquired a
(35:16):
company called Arbitron, which is a specialist in radio and
out of home measurement, and I think there was an
antitrust suit saying like you can't be the only people
using this. So they've now licensed that out. Uh, we're forced,
I think, to license it out to Calm Score, who
is now using that portable people meter, not purple people eaters.
(35:39):
And I think I'm understanding that correctly. But the long
and the short of it is, unless they get this right,
they think they're missing out on as much as of
TV viewing is going unaccounted for at this point. So
if you like you're a network or something like that,
that's ad revenue, right, that's an ad rate hike that
you aren't it. If you're an advertiser, that's like a
(36:03):
whole like ghost group that you may or may not
be getting your product in front of. But like you
can't say either way, Um, there's yeah, having ten or
fifercent of the advertising or viewing audience on accounting for
it is not acceptable to me. Not in modern America, buddy.
This is what I think is gonna happen. I think
(36:23):
they're gonna get their their jazz together UM and be
able to track who watches a show down to a
UM and the people who make the shows will sell
a package to an advertiser, and the advertiser spot runs
in that show no matter where it's consumed. So it's
(36:45):
like a three sixty deal. Basically, like this show is
going to be broadcast live or broadcast on on the NEPs,
it's going to be up on our player, you're gonna
be able to watch it on tablet. But in all
these it's going to be when you buy an ad spot,
it goes with the show, no matter where the show goes.
I could. And then there's another happy aspect of tracking viewing,
(37:08):
like down to this granular detail, your shows are more
likely to be saved. Our show, again, I say, would
not have been helped by any of this. But the
whole reason community was online are still on air. It
was because the NBC was smart enough to be like, oh,
well wait a minute, Like, yeah, it's ratings are abysmal
(37:29):
traditionally speaking, but on Twitter it actually trends. It's like
a worldwide trend that's valuable, and they figured out that
this is this is something you have to take into account.
Nielsen has as well. They launched a partnership with Twitter,
who in turn bought like a basically a TV trend
tracking service. So now Nielsen's going to start taking Twitter
(37:50):
trending into account into its ratings. And I think they
think Nielsen has a deal with Facebook too, right, I believe,
so to try and uh see like and what's trending?
I guess yeah, And so now it's not just going
to be how many people are watching, how many people
are talking about it, how people like dress up like
that character on you know that night? That kind of thing.
(38:11):
Um so really neat inventive shows that don't get a
huge national audience. Sure, we'll maybe have a longer life.
We must still have freaks and geeks. It's the yes,
that would be nice. Although that was a perfect run
and encapsulated in one season. Yeah, it's pretty great. And
everyone on that show went on to be huge movie
(38:32):
stars almost well, not everyone, but a lot of them
did most of them? Um Man, you know who, if
we would have had time, who we should have talked
to you about this was Luke Ryan. Oh yeah, our
buddy Luke Is. He's movies though, right, well now he does.
He knows all about this stuff. He does TV as well.
But he's just talking to him is like he's always
(38:53):
one step ahead. He's very very forward thinking guy. And
I bet he would verify your theory on where we're headed,
maybe tweak it. Well, Luke if you're out there listening,
let us know you'd better be listening. Um. And also,
I'm eternally grateful to Luke Ryan for my Billy's ABCA
signed tub time Machine poster. That's right, that's how we
(39:16):
first met him. Right, that's pretty cool. Uh. If you
want to know more about Luke Ryan or TV ratings,
you can type either of those two into the search
bar at how stuff works dot com. Uh. And since
I said Luke Ryan, not Luke Brian, that's different. I
don't even know who. Look Brian is. Oh, he's a huge,
big time country star. That's why I don't know who.
(39:38):
Do you know? He's sold out like two shows at
Madison Square Gardens and like apparently he's the only one
to ever do that. He's huge. Now what do people
sell out multiple shows at Madison Square Garden all the time?
Like Bruce sells out like six eight in a row.
He's one of them. Okay, maybe he broke like the
time record or something, but he's a he's a good
guy too. Though his name isn't Ellie Nelson, then I
(40:01):
don't know him well. Anyways, time for listener mail. I'm
gonna call this train conductor I love that job. We
had one that wrote in. Um Hey, guys, been wanting
to write in for a while now. I've been waiting
until I could think of something interesting to relate to you.
I found your podcast a while back in February. Is
looking for something to listen to while I commute to
(40:22):
work working out a pin station for the Long Island
Railroad as a train conductor, means my hours tend to
have me driving home anywhere from midnight to three am.
Prior to finding your show, all I listened to our
audiobooks or the radio. But I got bored with all
that after a while, and I noticed my eyelids were
getting heavier and heavier, which is about seventy miles door
to door. I'm going trip. Yeah, it's no good enter stuff.
(40:43):
You should know from the first time I listened to you,
guys have been wide awake, amused, and attended the whole drive.
That's why I want to thank you guys for keeping
me alive, because if not for your show, I'm sure
I would have fallen asleep and driven off the road.
Ever since childhood, I've always been fascinated about history and
learning how things work. Uh, and was evident by me
dismantling my toys and attempting to put them back together.
(41:04):
Although it's funny. In the end, I always had extra parts.
So again, thank you for accompanying me on my drive
home every night. It's been nice having three friends in
the car. Although one of you is extremely silent. That's Jerry.
And by the way, Jerry didn't get canceled. We were
just joking, all right, she's she's on the air. Uh,
and that is from Angel, Cartagena and Bethel, Connecticut, or
(41:26):
on Hell. I wondered about that, he says, ps if
it becomes listener, Male, I know you both try so
hard to pronounce things. My last name is Cartagena, like
the city in Romancing the Stone. But he didn't say
if it's end Hell or Angel. If his last name
is Cartagena, it's on Hell, I would think, but we'll see,
we will see. Let us know on Hell. That's what
I'm going with, all right. Uh, if you want to
(41:49):
let us know how to pronounce your name, We're always
happy to hear from buddies out there who listen and
listening land. You can tweet to us at s y
s K podcast. You can post the nunciation of your
name on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to stuff Podcasts at
how stuff works dot com, and, as always, hang out
with us at our home on the web, Stuff you
(42:10):
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, is that how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuckers Bryant, and there's Jerry W.
Jerre Rowland. Actually, Jerry has been canceled, okay, due to
(00:22):
low ratings. You know it's funny, is um. Jerry has
been portrayed on television and a TV show that was
canceled due to poor ratings. Poor ratings. That was our show.
That was our show. We had a television show once.
It was called Stuff you should Know. It was a
slightly fictionalized version of our life, our work life. We
(00:43):
made a sitcom. Yeah we did. It's pretty cool and
a lot of people loved it, and a lot of
people are like, what in the world did you do
it that way for? So that a lot it's like
basically ten and ten. Oh, yeah, you're referring to the
tony people who've seen that show. Yeah, actually we'll get
to that at all. But we um, we know a
little bit about how TV ratings work because of that,
(01:05):
and uh, in some ways I believe we're a victim
of the antiquated system that is the Nielsen TV ratings. Now, dude,
it's it's it's antiquated, it's changing. I do not disagree
with the antiquated part. What I do disagree with is
that had it been up to date, I think it
(01:26):
would have had zero impact on our success. I don't know, man,
I will say this to the people out there, what um.
What the network did was they looked only at one number,
which is the amount of people that sat down in
front of their television set on a Saturday night live
at ten pm to watch our show. They did not
(01:47):
count things that we'll talk about, like online streaming or
DVR um or anything like that, which is what makes
it antiquated. Because it's it's changing. Man. People aren't watching
TV like they used to. But they're basing a lot
of these uh decisions on a system that was designed
in the nineteen fifties. So let's go back, man. It
(02:09):
goes back even further than that, back in three the A. C.
Nielsen Company started. At the time, people who were broadcasting
radio wanted to know what people were listening to. So
there are a lot of companies that would telephone up
family at random and say, say, fella, what are you
(02:30):
listening to right now? On the old Victor Rola, the
Amazing adventure A. And uh, he'd say, hey, thanks a lot,
bub talk to you later, and they'd hang up a
nickel for your trouble, they wish, because we're talking depression
at this time. Um well not later on, they wished
the head a nickel. Here's a chicken for your pot.
(02:51):
That's a Hoover reference. Man, you don't get those two
often try to bust him out. So the Nielsen Company said,
that's all finding good. That's great that you guys are
figuring out what people are listening to, but we have
something even better because we are a technological powerhouse. And
what they did was they randomly picked some families around
America and said, say, can we put this cool recording
(03:15):
device in your home near your radio and it will
record what you're listening to at any given time, and
then we'll send technicians out to pick it up from
time to time to get the information off of it,
and then bring it back so we can keep recording it.
And family said sure, and the Nielsen Company's domination of
broadcast ratings was sealed. After that point, everybody from every
(03:39):
competitor they had was just peanuts compared to the Nielsen Company,
so much so that when you hear TV ratings, it's
synonymous with Nielsen ratings, very much like Kleenex and UH
facial tissue are one and the same same thing, thanks
to Nielsen's technological powerhouse. The irony of it, though, is
(04:00):
once they started installing those boxes in the twenties or thirties,
and then they moved on to television sets, the innovation,
I mean they innovated somewhat fundamentally principally, it remained the
same until a year or two ago. Yeah, and they're not, Um,
we'll get into all the hardware of the the hardware
(04:21):
side of how it works. But what they did in
n with send actual little diaries that you would fill
out and pencil and send back. And they still do
that today in two thousand fourteen, even though in two
thousand six they said they were going to stop. They
still send those little diaries. And you get a little
diary in the mail with five one dollar bills really
(04:42):
in the envelope for your troubles, and they look like
the modern nickel, Yeah exactly. And they rely on lazy,
dishonest people to fill out this card and mail it
back and then go spend that five dollars on a
on a grande a latte. It would have gotten a
lot more. Oh man, you could have bought a car.
(05:04):
But but that is the diary version. What UM and
and the networks and advertisers have never liked the diary version.
They still don't know. But it's what's called sweep sweek,
which is hard to say. That's right, and we'll get
it sweeps in a second. But um what they mainly
like to rely on are two different electronic hardware methods
(05:25):
UM the set meters as in TV set and people meters.
And right now they have by they plan to have
more than sixty TV set meters. And this is just
for the US and Canada, by the way, because everyone
else's TV is weird. Yeah, simon, do you ever watched
(05:45):
TV in different countries when you're traveling and stuff? Yes,
and it is so much fun. It is fun. But
after a while you're like, I really miss American TV. Yeah,
but I mean, if you're traveling abroad, you shouldn't be
watching a whole lot of TV. Exact, it's like late
night in the hotel. It's one of but it's one
of the great plus is as you're just like, I
don't feel like watching this, will go out and see
the site instead. Yeah. I think I was in Belgium
watching TV with my buddy Brett years and years ago,
(06:08):
and uh that was translated in English and subtitles and
one of the characters said something and I guess I
don't know if it was Flemish, and the other guy
just looked and said I and it said me too.
So we still say that today when we're responding me
to do each other, we'll go I all those years later.
So anyway, Um, the set, yeah, I said there was
(06:32):
in thirty one uh markets, TV markets, and then there
are about thirty five thousand, I believe. Now people meeters
in those homes, I'm sorry, in about twenty homes, and
those people meeters are more specific because you can have
(06:54):
three people meeters in one house. We want to see
what little Susie's watching, We want to see what her
brother Randy's watching, and they won't see what her dad
watches after everyone's gone to bed. Yeah, so each one
of them will have their own little people meter that
they'll turn on. And I always thought that these things
were connected to your television like your cable box and
it just kind of read the information, but they're actually
(07:16):
listening devices. Isn't that weird? Totally blew my mind. So basically,
the podcast the way that the way that Nielsen figures
out what TV show you're talking to is because they
have a device that's connected to the Internet that um
is eaves dropping on your TV. And they just in
(07:36):
two thousand and six finally got to the point where
they perfected this technology, and they have codes that broadcasters,
the networks and the local affiliates have to put in
to their audio stream, the audio video stream that the
audio stream is it just audio, yeah, but they're trying
to come up with the video version. So basically, there's
(07:57):
a a sound, there's a frequency that you can't hear.
I don't even think your dog can hear it, but
it comes through your TV and your Nielsen box can
hear it. And it's a it's basically an audio fingerprint
for a show. And when the Nielsen box here's that audio,
it can be like, oh, well, they're watching good Times
right now, that's funny. I was just thinking that Good Times, yeah,
(08:20):
and then I was like, no, let should say Three's
Company instead. It depends, and then he said good Times.
Although if you watch good Times long enough, there's an
episode of Three's Company coming on eventually on that channel.
That's I think good Times and maybe my favorite all
time theme song. That's a good one. Oh man, it's
so good, it's ridiculous. Did I tell you Henry Mancini
did the the What's Happening? Theme song? Yes? What episode
(08:44):
is that? In just a few ago it was number
stations because the sound that the shortwave thing. So uh,
That's how Nielsen has been figuring out what people are watching,
which is mind blowing. It's also if it's a little backwards, yeah,
it may be emblematic of a larger systematic resistance towards
(09:10):
technological improvement. Yeah. Or if it seems a little small
as far as the sample pool goes, Umi, it is.
But what they do is they extrapolate that number, just
like polsters do, and they say, well, this these are
average markets, these are average families. Um so if these
eventually sixty TV sets are watching this, we can pull
(09:32):
that out and and do some sort of They probably
do it on a chalkboard in a room. There's this
one guy who has the piece of chalk and the
extrapolate sets out and says, well, this is what America
is watching, which always has bugged me, especially when you
have a TV show that gets canceled. It is because
it all comes down to just how representative is your sample.
(09:53):
So there's six TV sets there, sixty by two thoften
right now in two thous in fourteen may have two
thousand fourteen. There are a hundred and sixteen point three
million TV set from the US. So this is a
very small sample size. But if the guy with the
chalk um Bert can can come up with a very
(10:13):
good representative portion of the US, Like there's this many
UM divorced Hispanic families, there's this many UM gay Asian households.
There's like this many you know, Mitt Romney voters, and
like they take all these guys and put them together
and it's a clear cross section of America. That's America, baby.
(10:36):
You should be able to extrapolate pretty pretty well from that.
That's true. It just all depends on how good their
statisticians are, that's right. And they do audits over the
years and quality checks of course, and compare ratings from
different samples. So it's not like they just said, yeah,
I saw we're doing it, although they sort of do that,
(10:57):
but they do they do quality checks of course. Yeah.
One of the problems is like there's been so few
challenges from outside competition that Nielsen can do whatever it wants,
and it's so powerful that it literally has the entire
television industry at its feet. It decides what rating a
TV show gets, and ultimately, the whole point to all
(11:19):
of this stuff, the TV ratings in general, is so
that networks and their local affiliates can set advertising rates
for advertisers. There's seventy eight billion dollars at stake. That's
the advertising spent in a year on television, and it
all comes down to what rating. Nielsen, with the representative
(11:41):
sample and their audio eavesdropping boxes and their five dollar
bills in a paper diary, decide that your TV show got.
That's right. That's the dirty little secret is that they
don't care how many people are watching that TV show.
They care about how many people are watching the commercials. Yeah,
that's really what they're looking at, and more specifically, what demographic,
(12:04):
which is why I don't think we mentioned why the
people meters are so valuable, because they want to get
that specific demo so they can show advertisers eighteen to
forty nine year olds, they spend a ton of money
and they're watching uh, they're watching Community, but no one
else is, so will cancel Community, which is kind of crazy,
as we'll see in a little a little while. Yeah,
(12:25):
but um, just quickly let me go over. I think
most people know this. But if you've got a half
hour TV show and um, you're gonna have twenty two
minutes of UH TV show, then you're gonna have eight
minutes of commercial. Six of those are national ads sold
by the network, and then your local affiliate. That's where
you're gonna get your awesome commercials. The Wolf two minutes
(12:46):
worth or crazy Eddie. I remember it was big up
in the Northeast and then so this is two thousand
and six. I couldn't find one recently, but back in
two thousand and six, you if you're buying a commercial
slot from a local affiliate, you're gonna pay about dollars
to two thousand dollars depending on This is during the daytime.
This isn't like three am, depending on what show. So
(13:06):
like back when Oprah was on, you could get a
thirty second spot for ninety bucks you could. Yeah, you
could also pay up to two thousand dollars for it,
and then apparently you're going to double that for um
a national ad for a thirty second spot during the day,
which isn't just not outlandish. Well that's how crazy Eddie.
(13:27):
I mean, yeah, or the wolf Man. They don't have
a ton of money. Although I don't know, the wolf
Man wore a lot of jewelry. For those of you
who don't know who the Wolfman is, we understand because
you probably didn't live in Atlanta. Yeah, I bet it
was Southeast I bet it was on like WTVS and stuff.
All you have to do is go type in Wolfman, Donna,
(13:48):
gallery furniture into the YouTube's and it will show you
some classic gallery furniture ads. Or just type in, hey,
ask for the Wolfman. No, ask for Donna. I don't
remember that part. What you don't remember Donna, his daughter
with the hair. The whole premise of the ad, wanted
you to come see him, and she'd say, Hey, ask
(14:09):
for the Wolfman. She'd go no, ask for Donna. She'd
always get his goat. All right, So let's take a
break here and then we'll talk about you mentioned Sweeps
Week and we'll talk about that right after this. Yeah,
we will, all right, sweeps Everyone's heard it. Um it
is a bit. Yeah, everyone hears about you know this
(14:29):
is sweeps Weeks. That's when well, well we'll tell you
what it is. This is the fact that the podcast
to me what sweets Week? Yeah, where it came from
and why it exists. Well, in when they started sending
out those TV diaries and uh, they made a geographic
sweep starting in the northeast, across the country from east
(14:49):
to west, and they collected the little booklets and those
were our first reportings of TV writings. So before they
had they had the eaves offing boxes that they were using.
But it was basically like, um, this this These are
I think maybe up the twenty thousand households at one
point in the major markets. There's the great thing about
(15:13):
the paper diaries is they could go into local markets,
smaller markets and find out not just what you know,
the people in New York or l A or Chicago
were watching, but what the people in you know, Santa
Fe were watching too, or you know, Fort Lauderdale. Those
are saying, how does it play in Santa Fe? Sheboygan
or something probably or Walla, Walla, I can't remember. It
(15:37):
may have been a movie thing too, but that there's
an industry saying, how does it play in the city.
It's got a rhyme because that's what matters, you know.
Of course New York, in l A and the major
markets are going to consume. Uh. They want to know
what your average household wants to see, right, And this
is this is the first time that anyone had ever
taken a really comprehensive snapshot of what America was watching
(16:01):
in a given week. And so they said, hey, this
worked really well. We're gonna start doing this every year.
We're gonna have what's now called a sweep Sweek and
it's going to be on this week. And so the
TV executive said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute,
sweep Sweek, this is what we're gonna start setting our
advertising rates against. And it's gonna be this week, and
I'm going to do the craziest stuff I can think
(16:24):
of to get ratings as as big and wide as
I possibly can grab on that week. And that is
where sweep Sweek came from. And we have seen some
pretty interesting things as a result of sweeps week. Yeah,
there's um a great tradition of stunt casting during sweeps week.
Justin Bieber will show up on c S. I. I
(16:44):
didn't see that one to do, and I don't watch
that show, and if I did, I would have punched
my TV if he showed up on it. Um, if
you're gonna shoot JR, You're gonna do it during sweep sweek.
Oh yeah. The late night talk shows are gonna load
up their their biggest A list guest during sweeps week.
E R did a live show. Yes, I've actually watched
that one, and I wasn't an e R fan. I
(17:05):
just wanted to see if they could pull it off. Right.
It's pretty cool. Ellen used to have a sitcom based
on her life and she came out on that show
during sweep Sweell. Yeah, that's right. And very famously, there
was a not one, not two, but thrice part Happy
Days where Fonzie jumps the shark on water skis that
(17:25):
sweep that happened during sweep sweek. Wow, that's a sweeps failure. Well,
I'll know if people watched it. Yeah. I don't guess
you can call it a failure because that's probably as iconic. Yeah,
it's part of the lexicon. Now do you remember an
Arrested development where Henry Winkler jumps over Shark Classic. Uh,
these days, sweep Sweek is actually sixteen weeks because they
(17:50):
have I don't know if but narrowed it down. They
broadened it out to four four week periods in November
of February, May and July, and they still old trot
out uh special things for sweeps but it's not it
definitely doesn't have the teeth that it used to because
the way that people consume media these days, which we're
gonna you know, start getting into, so not it doesn't
(18:12):
have the teeth that it used to. And and as
a result, um, a lot of networks have kind of stopped,
like you said, doing the stunt casting and that kind
of stuff. But it's still as a um um, it's
still basically holding broadcast TV hostage because that is still
what advertisers want to see, Well, what are your ratings
(18:33):
during sweeps Week? And that's what they set their ad
rates against. So the fact that there are these four
month long sweeps weeks um means that the broadcasters have
to follow the normal fall the summer broadcast model with
reruns in between. Yeah, and this is for for NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox,
(18:55):
like the major broadcast networks non cable networks, which is
a completely dying beast. Yeah, because they rely exclusively on advertising,
and cable has been eating their lunch because advertising has
been going down. It looks like it's already peaked. It's
still seventy eight million dollars billion billion. Yes, you're right,
(19:17):
but cable takes a huge substantial portion of that in advertising.
But then even when advertising rates go down, cable still
survives because cable makes money off of subscriber fees and
transmission fees to Yeah, exactly, which is why a cable
has a big leg up. And also they can um
they don't have a traditional television season. They can release
(19:40):
stuff all year long and you can binge watch it. Yeah,
which is happening. That's that's the new model. So, like
we said, for many years, um Nielsen was just kind
of as this one Wired article, the Nielsen family is
dead put it. It was in a torpor. And the
first thing that really per um, the first thing that
(20:01):
really roused um Nielsen was DVRs Because when DVRs came along,
the advertising industry was like, oh god, people can fast
forward through ads now like they've always dreamed of doing
exactly now they can, And it was the basically the
television apocalypse, and that didn't pan out because advertisers figured
(20:22):
out that, yeah, people can ever we can pass forward
two ads. But there's ways to still get your message
across at sixteen time speed. You can do things called
pop busters where you use the actors or the look
or the set of the TV show that you're advertising
within to make them think like the show just came
back on and you caught them. Because it's really an
ad um there's all sorts of stuff you can do,
(20:43):
so it hasn't been an advertising apocalypse. And as a result,
because DVRs are clearly clearly here to stay and have
been since you know, the early two thousands, um Nielsen
has had to kind of finally be like, Okay, we
need to innovate a little bit and figure out how
to include DVR because not everybody's sitting down at eight
o'clock on a Monday night and watching Murder. She wrote,
(21:06):
nobody is man. I watched a couple of episodes the
other night. I love that show. I've never seen one episode.
What I know, man, it is good? Is it's good?
Another thing too? Uh? Just the backtrack is I've noticed
lately is UM, you're on demand watching, which a lot
of cable companies. I'm a Comcast person by because I'm
(21:30):
forced to be. UM. A lot of the the on
demand shows now within the first like a couple of
weeks that they're available, you can't fast forward through. Oh yeah,
like you hit the fast forward button and a little
null sign comes up and says, sorry, you're gonna have
to sit through this. The DVR, I guess the fact
(21:52):
that the DVR is connected to the internet, yeah, and
is because it's getting show information that the actual show
is being recorded on your physical hard drive. I'm sure
there's cloud DVR recorders or whatever, but for the most part,
there's a hard drive that's recording shows onto your DVR.
And then the other capability is that it is connected
(22:13):
to the Internet, which is where it gets show information
and all that stuff to present to you. But the Internet,
as you may have figured out by now, is a
two way streak. Not only can information be downloaded to
your home, it can be uploaded and that includes your preferences.
How what shows you watch, how often you watch them
when you watch them, And so all of a sudden,
(22:34):
the DVR companies are like, hey, Nielsen's giving you guys,
like eight pm on NBC ratings. We've got all of
these other ratings that they're not taking into account that
you can get from us. Not only that, but they
can actually tell when you're pausing your TV because the
infamous nip slip hate even saying those words, uh, and
(22:56):
the two thousand four Super Bowl with Janet Jackson, they uh,
TiVo the people are DVR company, although the people still
use TVO. They probably do. I don't know. It's like
every local cable company has around d v R now
it seems like it. But um, they were able to
say that was the most replayed clip uh in the
history of TVO up into that point was people pausing
(23:16):
and rewinding. That's stupid, stupid stunt, right, But like you
were saying, they've now decided, um, but at least some
networks have decided they're gonna start counting. Um. What's called
the DVR I'm so better the DVR plus system, which
is DVR UM live plus Same Day. Yeah, that's the
(23:37):
Nielsen method. Live plus three days or Live plus three
and then Live plus seven, which is obviously Live plus
same days if you just watch it later that night.
Um plus three is three days within three days, and
then seven is within that week. And I'm staying like,
conflicting information out there. Seems like either they they now
have basically just Live plus Live plus three, which is
(24:00):
um like their main measurement. Well, what matters is what
the advertisers say is what we care about. Like, you
can have Live plus twenty, but if the advertisers are like,
we don't care about Live plus twenty, that doesn't do
anything for us exactly, It's true, but it sounds like
you're right. Like at one point they tried to say
that Live plus same Day is basically the same thing
(24:20):
Nielsen did and the advertising and they wanted to lump
it together with Live and and the advertisers like, no,
that's really not the same because of the fast forwarding thing. Yeah,
so let's at least separate these numbers out so we
can look at it all as individually. Yeah. Um, the
thing is is the people who are watching TV, you know,
I EU and I UM, we don't care what the
(24:43):
advertisers think. And they basically just need to keep up
with our viewing habits, which are changing radically. Yeah, the
broadcast networks have lost seventeen percent of the most coveted
demographic eighteen to forty nine year olds between two thousand
and twelve and two thousand just gone. Part of that
(25:04):
is because the networks put out terrible, terrible stuff, although
so did the cable networks these days too. But another
part of it is because broadcast is stuck in this
sweep weeks sweeps week um certain time and on a
certain day format that has been in forever since the fifties,
(25:26):
and they're being basically held hostage by Nielsen's ratings. So
there's been a real push to advance technologically and to
start taking into account these other myriad ways that people
consume television and uh, getting a clear picture of what
an audience is doing, and the fact that it's now
(25:48):
computer based and we have ways of tracking computers. Really,
broadcasters are as excited as ever and we just have
to figure out how to do it. And we'll talk
about how they're trying to figure out how to do
it right after this, Chuck. Yeah, we love squares space
dot com, don't we. Yeah, Because if you're in need
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(26:33):
it means all the time, all the time. Plus, squares
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up for a year. That's right, So everybody go use
the offer code s t u f F and get
temper sign off of your first purchase. That's squarespace, dot
com slash stuff offer code stuff. Well, one thing before
we get to the internet, um that we haven't mentioned
(27:39):
yet is you might hear in UH TV parlance the
word share as opposed to rating. Uh. And what that
is is is a share is how many people are
watching a certain TV show that are actually watching TV. UM.
A rating is just how many people are watching it,
But the share is how many people what share of
(27:59):
people are watching a show that are watching something other
people like? If your TV is off, it doesn't count.
Know that your share numbers always gonna be higher. Yeah
it is. But the rating is the the number of
people watching it compared to the entire population of America,
right exactly for Canada. Yeah, I keep forgeting about Canada.
They steal our shows. UM. So now we're onto the
(28:22):
the newest development. Um DVRs kind of threw a wrench
in the plans, but they're trying to take those into
account and they've they've been pretty successful, it seems like
with that. Yeah, once they settle on what they all
agree is a valid thing measurement, Yeah, valid measurement. Um.
But now, of course, people are consuming TV online more
than ever, on their laptops, on their tablets, their mobile devices.
(28:45):
Can throw out some figures for you real quick, Chuck,
Please consider this A hundred and sixteen million television sets
in the United States. There's a hundred and thirteen million tablets, Yeah,
a hundred and sixty six million smartphones, and two hundred
and forty three million Internet connected computers, double the amount
(29:06):
of televisions in the US. And people are watching stuff
whenever they want, however they want on this and as
it stands right now, Nielsen is still trying to figure
out how the heck they can most effectively track these people. Yeah, well,
this is the the first year, uh, this fall TV
season will be the very first year that uh, they're
(29:28):
gonna supposedly have a across the board measurement system with
TV ratings that will include viewership on everything including your
mobile device. And it's forced some innovation too, because the
Nielsen can't just say, oh, well, we'll add like an
eavesdropper onto your tablet or your smartphone because it will
drain your battery. Yeah, what it will probably be is
(29:50):
a is a third party app or piece of software.
And it makes sense. It seems like it would be
easier than ever to track watching habits in the near future. Okay,
it is. If your Google, if you're Nielsen, and you've
been basically caught off guard by this since you know,
you maybe started thinking about this in two thousand and eleven,
then you're in deep trouble. There's a very very effective
(30:12):
way of tracking computer use, Chuck, and it's called cookies.
And cookies have been around forever and they've gotten to
the point now where they can plant cookies on your tablet,
your smartphone, your computer. However, you have all these things
you use, and after a while, just from paying attention
to the data they they they're the algorithm will basically say,
(30:35):
I think these three cookies over here are the same person,
and they'll put them together and all of a sudden,
what was once three users is now one and the
picture is that much clear of who Binge watched Season
two of True Blood this week. You know. So there's
cookies out there and they've been around for a while,
(30:56):
and they're very easy to get and very easy to use.
And this is what New Wilson's up against. Yeah, and
you may be saying yourself, well, who cares how people
are watching it if it's online or on TV. But
what matters is advertisers. Uh. If you've noticed if you
watch shows online, like with Hulu or something, they're different commercials.
(31:16):
You're not seeing the same stuff. And they still can't
even decide now what to count because they don't want to. Uh.
You know, if if Brad Pitt does a pepsi commercial,
he probably has it in his contract. Well, this can
only run on on network on air TV in Thailand.
Don't don't show me on Hulu. I don't want my
(31:38):
commercial running online. If I show up in South Korea,
you owe me ten million dollars. That's right. So they
have a lot of control on how their images are seen.
Or maybe they maybe there's an awesome commercial that licensed,
Um the who's won't get fooled again, it's only licensed
for television. They can't show that same commercial online, so
(31:58):
you're gonna have to show what some advertisers or or
shows or networks might consider uh substandard ad, so they
don't want to count that as a view. Yeah, and
the same applies to TV shows to there there might
be actors, writers that are just for on air and
not for video distribution or um, just like with the ads.
(32:19):
So it seems to me like the the there's it's
not just Nielsen's up against this. The networks are still
trying to figure out things like TV everywhere, Like they
want you to be able to watch TV everywhere you
are at all times, because then they can serve you
ads everywhere at all times and they can charge for
those kind of things. But they can't say how to
(32:40):
track this yet one and not everything's cleared for all
forms of media to the other problem with online viewing
is that they don't have that all important demographic detail
okay again though or they could though if they start
using cookies, then they've got it right there. They that
this is what advertisers are salvating over, like hyper targeted ads.
(33:02):
So like imagine if you and I are watching the
same like classic episode a Saturday Night Live and I'm
watching on my computer, you're watching on your computer. We're
sitting right next to each other. We pressed play at
the same time, the ad break gets to the same
spot at the same time, and then boom, two different
ads come up. Yeah, I get Team because I'm in
my forties. You get a Ferrari ad because you're five
(33:23):
or six years young. Exactly, That's exactly what would happen to.
So this is what advertisers want, like that level of targeted.
But the Nielsen Company is still dominating. If they can
catch up, the Nielsen Company will be around for another
fifty hundred years. But again, they're up against cookie tracking
right now. And if somebody can come along and be like,
hey man, we've got all of your second screen data
(33:46):
you could ever want, then again Nielsen is in big trouble.
Well there, our company is trying to do that. There's
one called calm Score that says they can offer a
single metric that it shows who's watching television across a
single platform. You can think of time shifted, on demand, streaming, live,
whatever calm scores is, they can do it. Uh. NBC
(34:09):
has signed up with them and they haven't dropped Nielsen.
You know, they're just spending more money to try and
get better tracking. Uh. There's another company. They did that
in the two thousand fourteen Socy Olympics, right was at
the trial. Yeah, I think that's when they rolled it out.
Supposedly was super successful. Yeah, that's what they said. Um.
And then there's another one called ring Track that uh.
They their origins were just a video cassette distributor, but
(34:34):
they realized that that was going nowhere in two thousand
fourteen even worse. Yeah, they diversified into TV ratings and
they use cable set top boxes and right now have
deals with seventy networks and three D TV stations and
basically the competition. David Poltrak, he's a chief research officer
(34:55):
for CBS Corporation, said that it's the competition on the
research front is the most intense it's ever been and
pretty exciting time. Yeah. And Nielsen actually those um FTC
antitrust settlement where I think the way I understand it
is that Nielsen was using uh, they they acquired a
(35:16):
company called Arbitron, which is a specialist in radio and
out of home measurement, and I think there was an
antitrust suit saying like you can't be the only people
using this. So they've now licensed that out. Uh, we're forced,
I think, to license it out to Calm Score, who
is now using that portable people meter, not purple people eaters.
(35:39):
And I think I'm understanding that correctly. But the long
and the short of it is, unless they get this right,
they think they're missing out on as much as of
TV viewing is going unaccounted for at this point. So
if you like you're a network or something like that,
that's ad revenue, right, that's an ad rate hike that
you aren't it. If you're an advertiser, that's like a
(36:03):
whole like ghost group that you may or may not
be getting your product in front of. But like you
can't say either way, Um, there's yeah, having ten or
fifercent of the advertising or viewing audience on accounting for
it is not acceptable to me. Not in modern America, buddy.
This is what I think is gonna happen. I think
(36:23):
they're gonna get their their jazz together UM and be
able to track who watches a show down to a
UM and the people who make the shows will sell
a package to an advertiser, and the advertiser spot runs
in that show no matter where it's consumed. So it's
(36:45):
like a three sixty deal. Basically, like this show is
going to be broadcast live or broadcast on on the NEPs,
it's going to be up on our player, you're gonna
be able to watch it on tablet. But in all
these it's going to be when you buy an ad spot,
it goes with the show, no matter where the show goes.
I could. And then there's another happy aspect of tracking viewing,
(37:08):
like down to this granular detail, your shows are more
likely to be saved. Our show, again, I say, would
not have been helped by any of this. But the
whole reason community was online are still on air. It
was because the NBC was smart enough to be like, oh,
well wait a minute, Like, yeah, it's ratings are abysmal
(37:29):
traditionally speaking, but on Twitter it actually trends. It's like
a worldwide trend that's valuable, and they figured out that
this is this is something you have to take into account.
Nielsen has as well. They launched a partnership with Twitter,
who in turn bought like a basically a TV trend
tracking service. So now Nielsen's going to start taking Twitter
(37:50):
trending into account into its ratings. And I think they
think Nielsen has a deal with Facebook too, right, I believe,
so to try and uh see like and what's trending?
I guess yeah, And so now it's not just going
to be how many people are watching, how many people
are talking about it, how people like dress up like
that character on you know that night? That kind of thing.
(38:11):
Um so really neat inventive shows that don't get a
huge national audience. Sure, we'll maybe have a longer life.
We must still have freaks and geeks. It's the yes,
that would be nice. Although that was a perfect run
and encapsulated in one season. Yeah, it's pretty great. And
everyone on that show went on to be huge movie
(38:32):
stars almost well, not everyone, but a lot of them
did most of them? Um Man, you know who, if
we would have had time, who we should have talked
to you about this was Luke Ryan. Oh yeah, our
buddy Luke Is. He's movies though, right, well now he does.
He knows all about this stuff. He does TV as well.
But he's just talking to him is like he's always
(38:53):
one step ahead. He's very very forward thinking guy. And
I bet he would verify your theory on where we're headed,
maybe tweak it. Well, Luke if you're out there listening,
let us know you'd better be listening. Um. And also,
I'm eternally grateful to Luke Ryan for my Billy's ABCA
signed tub time Machine poster. That's right, that's how we
(39:16):
first met him. Right, that's pretty cool. Uh. If you
want to know more about Luke Ryan or TV ratings,
you can type either of those two into the search
bar at how stuff works dot com. Uh. And since
I said Luke Ryan, not Luke Brian, that's different. I
don't even know who. Look Brian is. Oh, he's a huge,
big time country star. That's why I don't know who.
(39:38):
Do you know? He's sold out like two shows at
Madison Square Gardens and like apparently he's the only one
to ever do that. He's huge. Now what do people
sell out multiple shows at Madison Square Garden all the time?
Like Bruce sells out like six eight in a row.
He's one of them. Okay, maybe he broke like the
time record or something, but he's a he's a good
guy too. Though his name isn't Ellie Nelson, then I
(40:01):
don't know him well. Anyways, time for listener mail. I'm
gonna call this train conductor I love that job. We
had one that wrote in. Um Hey, guys, been wanting
to write in for a while now. I've been waiting
until I could think of something interesting to relate to you.
I found your podcast a while back in February. Is
looking for something to listen to while I commute to
(40:22):
work working out a pin station for the Long Island
Railroad as a train conductor, means my hours tend to
have me driving home anywhere from midnight to three am.
Prior to finding your show, all I listened to our
audiobooks or the radio. But I got bored with all
that after a while, and I noticed my eyelids were
getting heavier and heavier, which is about seventy miles door
to door. I'm going trip. Yeah, it's no good enter stuff.
(40:43):
You should know from the first time I listened to you,
guys have been wide awake, amused, and attended the whole drive.
That's why I want to thank you guys for keeping
me alive, because if not for your show, I'm sure
I would have fallen asleep and driven off the road.
Ever since childhood, I've always been fascinated about history and
learning how things work. Uh, and was evident by me
dismantling my toys and attempting to put them back together.
(41:04):
Although it's funny. In the end, I always had extra parts.
So again, thank you for accompanying me on my drive
home every night. It's been nice having three friends in
the car. Although one of you is extremely silent. That's Jerry.
And by the way, Jerry didn't get canceled. We were
just joking, all right, she's she's on the air. Uh,
and that is from Angel, Cartagena and Bethel, Connecticut, or
(41:26):
on Hell. I wondered about that, he says, ps if
it becomes listener, Male, I know you both try so
hard to pronounce things. My last name is Cartagena, like
the city in Romancing the Stone. But he didn't say
if it's end Hell or Angel. If his last name
is Cartagena, it's on Hell, I would think, but we'll see,
we will see. Let us know on Hell. That's what
I'm going with, all right. Uh, if you want to
(41:49):
let us know how to pronounce your name, We're always
happy to hear from buddies out there who listen and
listening land. You can tweet to us at s y
s K podcast. You can post the nunciation of your
name on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to stuff Podcasts at
how stuff works dot com, and, as always, hang out
with us at our home on the web, Stuff you
(42:10):
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, is that how stuff Works dot com
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