June 1, 2019 • 41 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 (00:03):
Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here with another Stuff
you Should Know select this week everyone, I picked out
an episode about TV ratings because I don't know. I
love TV and it's interesting. This from September two, fourteen,
and I hope you enjoyed. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:29):
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 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.
(00:51):
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 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.
(01:13):
Oh yeah, you're referring to the Tony people who've seen
this show. Yeah, actually we'll get to that all. But we, um,
we know a little bit about how TV ratings work
because of that, 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. Why
(01:38):
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 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
(01:58):
front of their television set on a Saturday night live
at ten pm to watch our show. Right. They did
not 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
(02:19):
lot of these uh decisions on a system that was
designed in the nineteen fifties. So let's go back, man,
it goes back even further than that. Back in the A. C.
Nielsen Company started. At the time, people who were broadcasting
radio wanted to know what people were listening to. So
(02:42):
there are a lot of companies that would telephone up
family at random and say, say, fella, what are you
listening to right now on the old Victor Rola The
Amazing Adventure AWA, and uh he'd say, hey, thanks a lot,
bub talk to you later, and they'd hang up a
nickel fill your trouble. So that they because we're talking
depression at this time, um, well not later on, they
(03:06):
wish the head a nickel. Here's a chicken for your pot.
That's a Hoover reference. Man, you don't get those two
often try to bust them out. So the Nielsen Company said,
that's all fine and 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
(03:29):
around America and said, say, can we put this cool
recording 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
(03:50):
domination of broadcast ratings was sealed. After that point, everybody
from every competitor they had was just peanuts can here
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
(04:11):
same same thing thanks to Nielsen's technological powerhouse. The irony
of it, though, is that 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
(04:32):
or two ago. Yeah, and they're not, um, we'll get
into all the hardware of the the hardware side of
how it works. But what they did in nur 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
(04:53):
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 bill really 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
(05:14):
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. 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.
(05:35):
That's right, we'll get it sweeps in a second. But
um what they mainly like to rely on are two
different electronic hardware methods 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.
(05:56):
And this is just for the U. S and Canada,
by the way, because everyone else is TV is weird. Yeah, simon,
do you ever watched 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
it was like late night in the hotel. It's one
(06:16):
of but it's one of the great pluses is you're
just like, I don't feel like watching this, will go
out and see the sights instead. Yeah. I think I
was in Belgium watching TV with my buddy Brett years
and years ago, 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
(06:37):
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 were SI in thirty one uh markets,
TV markets, and then there are about thirty five thousand,
(07:01):
I believe. Now people meeters in those homes. I'm sorry
in about homes and those people meeters are more specific
because you can have 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. Chafter everyone's gone to bed,
(07:24):
so each one of them will have their own little
people meeter 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 listening devices. Isn't that weird? Totally blew
my mind. So basically at the podcast and the way
that the way that Nielsen figures out what TV show
(07:44):
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 two thousand and six
finally got to the point where they perfected this technology
and they have of codes that broadcasters, the networks and
the local affiliates have to put in to their audio
(08:07):
stream the audio video stream that just the audio stream.
Is it just audio? Yeah, but they're trying to come
up with the video version. So basically, there's 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.
(08:29):
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,
and then I was like, no, I should say Three's
Company instead. It's 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 maybe my favorite all time
(08:51):
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 was that
in just a few ago? That was number Stations? Because
the sound that the short wave thing mean, so uh.
(09:12):
That's how Nielsen's been figuring out what people are watching,
which is mind blowing. It's also if it seems a
little backwards, yeah, it may be emblematic of a larger
systematic resistance towards technological improvement. Yeah, or if it seems
a little small as far as the sample pool goes um,
(09:34):
which it is 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 TV sets are watching this, we
can pull that out and and do some sort of
(09:54):
They probably do it on a chalkboard in a room.
There's this one guy who has the piece of chalk
and the rapp Late 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. So there's six TV sets there
(10:14):
by two thousand fifteen, right now in two thousand fourteen,
may have two thousand fourteen. There are a hundred and
sixteen point three million TV sets in 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 good representative portion of the US. Like
there's this many um divorced Hispanic families, there's this many
(10:40):
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, you should be able to
extrapolate pretty pretty well from that, that's true. It just
(11:00):
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 it, I saw we're doing it,
although they sort of do that, 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
(11:22):
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 of this stuff,
to TV ratings in general, is so that networks and
their local affiliates can set advertising rates for advertisers. There's
(11:48):
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 their representative sample and their
audio eavesdropping boxes and their five dollar bills in a
paper diary, decide that your TV show got. That's right.
(12:09):
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,
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
(12:30):
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 we'll cancel Community, which is kind of crazy,
as we'll see in a little a little while. Yeah,
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
(12:53):
minutes of commercial. Six of those are national ads sold
by the network, and then your local affiliate is that's
where you're gonna get your awesome commercials. Hey just for
the Wolfman two minutes worth or crazy Eddie. I remember
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
(13:13):
buying a commercial slot from a local affiliate, you're gonna
pay about a hundred dollars to two thousand dollars depending
on This is during the daytime. This isn't like three am,
but depending on what show. So, like back when Oprah
was on, you could get a thirty second spot for
ninety bucks you could affiliate. Yeah, you could also pay
up to two thousand dollars for it, and then apparently
(13:35):
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, I mean, yeah,
or the Wolfman, they don't have a ton of money.
Although I don't know a wolfman wore a lot of jewelry. Yeah,
that's true. For those of you who don't know who
the Wolfman is, we understand because you probably didn't live
(13:56):
in Atlanta. Yeah, I bet its Southeast. I bet it
was on like WTVS and stuff. All you have to
do is go type in Wolfman Donna 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.
(14:17):
What you don't remember Donna his daughter with the hair.
The whole premise of the ad man wanted you to
come see him, and she'd say, hey, ask for the
wolf Man. She go, no, ask for Donna. All right,
(14:54):
Sweeps everyone's heard it. Um it is a bit everywhere. Yeah,
everyone hears about you know this 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 SWEEPS week? Yeah,
where it came from and why it exists. Well, in
is when they started sending out those TV diaries and uh,
(15:15):
they made a geographic sweep starting in the northeast across
the country from east to west, and they collected the
little booklets and those were our first reportings of TV writings.
So before they had they had the eavesdropping boxes that
they were using. But it was basically like um, this
this These are I think maybe up to twenty thousand
(15:39):
households at one point in the major markets. The the
great thing about 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 and
you know Santa Fe were watching too, or you know
Fort Lauderdale. Yeah, those are saying, how does it play
(16:01):
in Santa Fe? Sheboygan or something probably or Walla, Walla,
I can't remember. It may have been a movie thing too,
but that there's an industry saying how does it play
in the city. It's out of 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,
(16:23):
And this is this is the first time that anyone
had ever taken a really comprehensive snapshot of what America
was watching 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 sweeps week and
it's going to be on this week. And so the
TV executive said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute,
(16:46):
Sweeps Week, this is what we're gonna start setting our
advertising rates against. And it's going to be this week,
and I'm going to do the craziest stuff I can
think of to get ratings as as big and wide
as I possibly can grab on that week, and that
is where sweep Sweet came from. And we've seen some
pretty interesting things as a result of Sweeps weak. Yeah,
(17:09):
there's um a great tradition of stunt casting during sweeps week.
Justin Bieber will show up on c S. I. I
didn't see that one, did you? 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 sweeps weeks.
Oh yeah. The late night talk shows are gonna load
up their their biggest A list guests during sweeps week.
(17:31):
E R did a live show. Yeah. I actually watched
that one, and I wasn't an e R fan. I
just wanted to see if they could pull it off.
Yeah right, it's pretty cool. Ellen used to have a
sitcom based on her life and she came out on
that show during sweep sweek. Oh yeah, that's right. And
very famously there was a not one, not too but
thrice part Happy Days where Fonzie jumps a shark on
(17:55):
water skis that sweeps 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 US 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
(18:17):
actually sixteen weeks because they have I don't know, but
narrowed it down. They broadened it out to four four
week periods in November of February, May and July, and um,
they still tried 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,
(18:39):
which we're gonna you know, start getting into. So no,
it doesn't 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
(19:03):
ratings 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,
(19:25):
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,
(19:48):
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 yep,
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
(20:10):
stuff all year long and uh, 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 perfect um the first thing that really
(20:32):
roused um Nielsen was DVRs because when DVRs came along,
the advertising industry was like, oh god, people can fast
forward through ads now. Yeah, 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
(20:53):
figured out that, yeah, people can ever, we can fast
forward two ads, but there's ways to still get your
message across at sixteen time speed. You can do things
called popbusters 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 yep. Because it's really
an ad um there's all sorts of stuff you can do.
(21:14):
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 thousand's, 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,
(21:37):
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?
M 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
(22:00):
I'm forced to be. Yeah, um yeah, 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 do 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
(22:22):
guess the fact that the DVR is connected to the
internet and is because it's getting show information. The 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
(22:43):
is connected 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 street. Not only can information be
downloaded to your home, it can be uploaded. And that
includes your preferences. How what shows you watch, um, how
often you watch them, when you watch them, and so
(23:04):
all of a sudden, 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
(23:25):
those words uh in the two thousand four Super Bowl
with Janet Jackson, they uh TiVo the popular DVR company,
although the people still use Tvo. They probably do. I
don't know. It's like every local cable company has their
own dv R now it seems like it, but um,
they were able to say that was the most replayed
clip h in the history of TiVo up into that
(23:45):
point was people pausing 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 it called the DVR I'm so better the
DVR plus system, which is DVR UM live plus same day. Yeah,
(24:07):
that's the 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 seeing
like conflicting information out there. Seems like either they they
now have basically just Live plus Live plus three, which
(24:30):
is 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
(24:50):
same thing 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. So because of the fast
forwarding thing, Yeah, so let's at least separate these numbers
out so we can look at it all individually. Yeah. UM.
The thing is is the people who are watching TV,
you know, I, EU and I UM, we don't care
(25:13):
what the advertisers think, and they basically just need to
keep up with our viewing habits, which are changing radically.
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 thirteen, sevent just gone. Part
(25:34):
of that 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
(25:56):
the fifties, 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
(26:18):
now 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. Well, one thing before we get
(26:48):
to the internet, UM that we haven't mentioned yet is
you might hear in UH TV parlance the word share
as opposed to rating. Uh. And what that is is
a 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,
(27:09):
But the share is how many people what share of
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 number of people
watching it compared to the entire population of America, right exactly.
For Canada, Yeah, I keep forget about Canada. They steal
(27:31):
our shows. UM. So now we're onto the 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,
(27:55):
on their tablets, their mobile devices, and throughout 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
sixties six million smartphones, and two hundred and forty three
million Internet connected computers, double the amount of televisions in
(28:19):
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 gonna
(28:41):
supposedly have a across the board measurement system with TV
ratings that will include viewership on everything, including your mobile device,
and has forced some innovation too, because the Nielson can't
just say, oh, well, we'll add like an eavesdropper onto
your tablet or your smartphone because it'll drain your battery. Yeah.
What it will probably be is a is a third
(29:03):
party app or a 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 way
(29:25):
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're they're the algorithm will basically say,
(29:47):
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. Yeah, So
there's cookies out there, and they've been around for a while,
(30:08):
and they're very easy to get, very easy to use,
and this is what Nielsen'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.
(30:28):
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
(30:50):
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 uh, maybe there's an awesome commercial that licensed,
Um the who's won't get fooled again, it's only license
for television. They can't show that same commercial online, so
(31:10):
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.
(31:31):
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
(31:52):
track this yet one and not everything's cleared for all
forms of media to the other problem with online viewing
is 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 that this is what
advertisers are salivating over, like hyper targeted ads. So like,
(32:15):
imagine if you and I are watching the same like
classic episode of 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 because I'm in my forties, you get a
ferrari ad because you're five or six years younger. Exactly,
(32:37):
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 you could
(32:58):
ever want, then again Nielsen's in big trouble. Well, there
are companies 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 every single platform you
can think of time shifted, on demand, streaming, live, whatever.
(33:18):
Calm scores as they can do it. Uh, NBC has
signed up with them and they haven't dropped Nilsen. You know,
they're just spending more money to try and get better tracking.
There's another company. They did that in the two thousand
fourteen Sochi 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
(33:43):
a video cassette distributor, but they realized that that was
going nowhere. In two thousand fourteen, even worse, they were Beta. Yes,
they've diversified into TV ratings and they use cable set
top boxes and right now have deals with seventy at
works and three TV stations and basically the competition. David Poltrak,
(34:05):
he's a chief research officer 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 company called Arbitron, which is
(34:30):
a specialist in radio and out of home measurement, and
I think there was an anti trust 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 Eater, And I
(34:51):
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 five percent
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 getting. If you're an advertiser, that's like a
(35:15):
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
fift percent of the advertising or viewing audience on accounting
for is not acceptable to me. Not in modern America, buddy.
This is what I think is gonna happen. I think
(35:35):
they're gonna get their their jazz together UM and be
able to track who watches a show down to 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 like
(35:57):
a three sixty deal. Basically, like this 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 of
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,
(36:20):
like down to this granular detail, your shows are more
likely to be saved. Our show, again, I say, would
not have been held by any of this. But the
whole reason community was online or 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 traditionally speaking,
(36:43):
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 is going to start taking Twitter trending
(37:03):
into account into its ratings. And I think they think
Nielsen has a deal with Facebook too, right, I believe.
So you have to try and uh, see again, 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. Um,
(37:24):
so really neat inventive shows that don't get a huge
national audience, well, maybe have a longer life. We might
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 stars almost
(37:45):
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 his movies though right well now he does. He
knows all about the stuff. He does TV as well.
But he's just talking to him is like he's always
one step ahead. He's very very forward thinking guy, and
(38:10):
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 the hot Tub time Machine poster. That's right, that's
how we first met him, right, that's pretty cool. Uh.
(38:30):
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, Yeah,
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. Do you know? He's sold out like
(38:51):
two shows at Madison Square Gardens and like apparently he's
the only one to ever do that. He's huge. What
do you 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. You know, if
his name isn't Willie Nelson, then I don't know him. Well. Anyways,
(39:14):
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 it's
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 work working out a
(39:35):
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 trip. Yeah, it's
no good enter stuff. You should know from the first
(39:57):
time I listen 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. Although it's funny, in the end,
(40:17):
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. She's she's
on the air. Uh, and that is from Angel, Cartagena
and Bethel, Connecticut or on Hell. I wondered about that,
(40:40):
he says, PS if this 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 he's in 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,
(41:00):
if you want to let us know how to pronounce
your name, We're always happy to hear from buddies out
there who listen in listening Land. You can tweak to
us at s y s K podcast. You can post
the pronunciation of your name on Facebook dot com, slash
stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and
as always, hang out with us at our home on
(41:21):
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com Stuff You
Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here with another Stuff
you Should Know select this week everyone, I picked out
an episode about TV ratings because I don't know. I
love TV and it's interesting. This from September two, fourteen,
and I hope you enjoyed. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:29):
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 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.
(00:51):
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 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.
(01:13):
Oh yeah, you're referring to the Tony people who've seen
this show. Yeah, actually we'll get to that all. But we, um,
we know a little bit about how TV ratings work
because of that, 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. Why
(01:38):
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 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
(01:58):
front of their television set on a Saturday night live
at ten pm to watch our show. Right. They did
not 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
(02:19):
lot of these uh decisions on a system that was
designed in the nineteen fifties. So let's go back, man,
it goes back even further than that. Back in the A. C.
Nielsen Company started. At the time, people who were broadcasting
radio wanted to know what people were listening to. So
(02:42):
there are a lot of companies that would telephone up
family at random and say, say, fella, what are you
listening to right now on the old Victor Rola The
Amazing Adventure AWA, and uh he'd say, hey, thanks a lot,
bub talk to you later, and they'd hang up a
nickel fill your trouble. So that they because we're talking
depression at this time, um, well not later on, they
(03:06):
wish the head a nickel. Here's a chicken for your pot.
That's a Hoover reference. Man, you don't get those two
often try to bust them out. So the Nielsen Company said,
that's all fine and 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
(03:29):
around America and said, say, can we put this cool
recording 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
(03:50):
domination of broadcast ratings was sealed. After that point, everybody
from every competitor they had was just peanuts can here
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
(04:11):
same same thing thanks to Nielsen's technological powerhouse. The irony
of it, though, is that 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
(04:32):
or two ago. Yeah, and they're not, um, we'll get
into all the hardware of the the hardware side of
how it works. But what they did in nur 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
(04:53):
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 bill really 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
(05:14):
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. 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.
(05:35):
That's right, we'll get it sweeps in a second. But
um what they mainly like to rely on are two
different electronic hardware methods 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.
(05:56):
And this is just for the U. S and Canada,
by the way, because everyone else is TV is weird. Yeah, simon,
do you ever watched 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
it was like late night in the hotel. It's one
(06:16):
of but it's one of the great pluses is you're
just like, I don't feel like watching this, will go
out and see the sights instead. Yeah. I think I
was in Belgium watching TV with my buddy Brett years
and years ago, 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
(06:37):
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 were SI in thirty one uh markets,
TV markets, and then there are about thirty five thousand,
(07:01):
I believe. Now people meeters in those homes. I'm sorry
in about homes and those people meeters are more specific
because you can have 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. Chafter everyone's gone to bed,
(07:24):
so each one of them will have their own little
people meeter 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 listening devices. Isn't that weird? Totally blew
my mind. So basically at the podcast and the way
that the way that Nielsen figures out what TV show
(07:44):
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 two thousand and six
finally got to the point where they perfected this technology
and they have of codes that broadcasters, the networks and
the local affiliates have to put in to their audio
(08:07):
stream the audio video stream that just the audio stream.
Is it just audio? Yeah, but they're trying to come
up with the video version. So basically, there's 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.
(08:29):
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,
and then I was like, no, I should say Three's
Company instead. It's 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 maybe my favorite all time
(08:51):
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 was that
in just a few ago? That was number Stations? Because
the sound that the short wave thing mean, so uh.
(09:12):
That's how Nielsen's been figuring out what people are watching,
which is mind blowing. It's also if it seems a
little backwards, yeah, it may be emblematic of a larger
systematic resistance towards technological improvement. Yeah, or if it seems
a little small as far as the sample pool goes um,
(09:34):
which it is 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 TV sets are watching this, we
can pull that out and and do some sort of
(09:54):
They probably do it on a chalkboard in a room.
There's this one guy who has the piece of chalk
and the rapp Late 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. So there's six TV sets there
(10:14):
by two thousand fifteen, right now in two thousand fourteen,
may have two thousand fourteen. There are a hundred and
sixteen point three million TV sets in 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 good representative portion of the US. Like
there's this many um divorced Hispanic families, there's this many
(10:40):
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, you should be able to
extrapolate pretty pretty well from that, that's true. It just
(11:00):
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 it, I saw we're doing it,
although they sort of do that, 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
(11:22):
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 of this stuff,
to TV ratings in general, is so that networks and
their local affiliates can set advertising rates for advertisers. There's
(11:48):
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 their representative sample and their
audio eavesdropping boxes and their five dollar bills in a
paper diary, decide that your TV show got. That's right.
(12:09):
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,
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
(12:30):
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 we'll cancel Community, which is kind of crazy,
as we'll see in a little a little while. Yeah,
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
(12:53):
minutes of commercial. Six of those are national ads sold
by the network, and then your local affiliate is that's
where you're gonna get your awesome commercials. Hey just for
the Wolfman two minutes worth or crazy Eddie. I remember
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
(13:13):
buying a commercial slot from a local affiliate, you're gonna
pay about a hundred dollars to two thousand dollars depending
on This is during the daytime. This isn't like three am,
but depending on what show. So, like back when Oprah
was on, you could get a thirty second spot for
ninety bucks you could affiliate. Yeah, you could also pay
up to two thousand dollars for it, and then apparently
(13:35):
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, I mean, yeah,
or the Wolfman, they don't have a ton of money.
Although I don't know a wolfman wore a lot of jewelry. Yeah,
that's true. For those of you who don't know who
the Wolfman is, we understand because you probably didn't live
(13:56):
in Atlanta. Yeah, I bet its Southeast. I bet it
was on like WTVS and stuff. All you have to
do is go type in Wolfman Donna 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.
(14:17):
What you don't remember Donna his daughter with the hair.
The whole premise of the ad man wanted you to
come see him, and she'd say, hey, ask for the
wolf Man. She go, no, ask for Donna. All right,
(14:54):
Sweeps everyone's heard it. Um it is a bit everywhere. Yeah,
everyone hears about you know this 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 SWEEPS week? Yeah,
where it came from and why it exists. Well, in
is when they started sending out those TV diaries and uh,
(15:15):
they made a geographic sweep starting in the northeast across
the country from east to west, and they collected the
little booklets and those were our first reportings of TV writings.
So before they had they had the eavesdropping boxes that
they were using. But it was basically like um, this
this These are I think maybe up to twenty thousand
(15:39):
households at one point in the major markets. The the
great thing about 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 and
you know Santa Fe were watching too, or you know
Fort Lauderdale. Yeah, those are saying, how does it play
(16:01):
in Santa Fe? Sheboygan or something probably or Walla, Walla,
I can't remember. It may have been a movie thing too,
but that there's an industry saying how does it play
in the city. It's out of 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,
(16:23):
And this is this is the first time that anyone
had ever taken a really comprehensive snapshot of what America
was watching 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 sweeps week and
it's going to be on this week. And so the
TV executive said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute,
(16:46):
Sweeps Week, this is what we're gonna start setting our
advertising rates against. And it's going to be this week,
and I'm going to do the craziest stuff I can
think of to get ratings as as big and wide
as I possibly can grab on that week, and that
is where sweep Sweet came from. And we've seen some
pretty interesting things as a result of Sweeps weak. Yeah,
(17:09):
there's um a great tradition of stunt casting during sweeps week.
Justin Bieber will show up on c S. I. I
didn't see that one, did you? 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 sweeps weeks.
Oh yeah. The late night talk shows are gonna load
up their their biggest A list guests during sweeps week.
(17:31):
E R did a live show. Yeah. I actually watched
that one, and I wasn't an e R fan. I
just wanted to see if they could pull it off.
Yeah right, it's pretty cool. Ellen used to have a
sitcom based on her life and she came out on
that show during sweep sweek. Oh yeah, that's right. And
very famously there was a not one, not too but
thrice part Happy Days where Fonzie jumps a shark on
(17:55):
water skis that sweeps 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 US 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
(18:17):
actually sixteen weeks because they have I don't know, but
narrowed it down. They broadened it out to four four
week periods in November of February, May and July, and um,
they still tried 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,
(18:39):
which we're gonna you know, start getting into. So no,
it doesn't 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
(19:03):
ratings 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,
(19:25):
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,
(19:48):
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 yep,
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
(20:10):
stuff all year long and uh, 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 perfect um the first thing that really
(20:32):
roused um Nielsen was DVRs because when DVRs came along,
the advertising industry was like, oh god, people can fast
forward through ads now. Yeah, 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
(20:53):
figured out that, yeah, people can ever, we can fast
forward two ads, but there's ways to still get your
message across at sixteen time speed. You can do things
called popbusters 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 yep. Because it's really
an ad um there's all sorts of stuff you can do.
(21:14):
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 thousand's, 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,
(21:37):
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?
M 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
(22:00):
I'm forced to be. Yeah, um yeah, 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 do 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
(22:22):
guess the fact that the DVR is connected to the
internet and is because it's getting show information. The 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
(22:43):
is connected 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 street. Not only can information be
downloaded to your home, it can be uploaded. And that
includes your preferences. How what shows you watch, um, how
often you watch them, when you watch them, and so
(23:04):
all of a sudden, 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
(23:25):
those words uh in the two thousand four Super Bowl
with Janet Jackson, they uh TiVo the popular DVR company,
although the people still use Tvo. They probably do. I
don't know. It's like every local cable company has their
own dv R now it seems like it, but um,
they were able to say that was the most replayed
clip h in the history of TiVo up into that
(23:45):
point was people pausing 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 it called the DVR I'm so better the
DVR plus system, which is DVR UM live plus same day. Yeah,
(24:07):
that's the 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 seeing
like conflicting information out there. Seems like either they they
now have basically just Live plus Live plus three, which
(24:30):
is 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
(24:50):
same thing 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. So because of the fast
forwarding thing, Yeah, so let's at least separate these numbers
out so we can look at it all individually. Yeah. UM.
The thing is is the people who are watching TV,
you know, I, EU and I UM, we don't care
(25:13):
what the advertisers think, and they basically just need to
keep up with our viewing habits, which are changing radically.
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 thirteen, sevent just gone. Part
(25:34):
of that 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
(25:56):
the fifties, 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
(26:18):
now 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. Well, one thing before we get
(26:48):
to the internet, UM that we haven't mentioned yet is
you might hear in UH TV parlance the word share
as opposed to rating. Uh. And what that is is
a 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,
(27:09):
But the share is how many people what share of
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 number of people
watching it compared to the entire population of America, right exactly.
For Canada, Yeah, I keep forget about Canada. They steal
(27:31):
our shows. UM. So now we're onto the 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,
(27:55):
on their tablets, their mobile devices, and throughout 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
sixties six million smartphones, and two hundred and forty three
million Internet connected computers, double the amount of televisions in
(28:19):
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 gonna
(28:41):
supposedly have a across the board measurement system with TV
ratings that will include viewership on everything, including your mobile device,
and has forced some innovation too, because the Nielson can't
just say, oh, well, we'll add like an eavesdropper onto
your tablet or your smartphone because it'll drain your battery. Yeah.
What it will probably be is a is a third
(29:03):
party app or a 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 way
(29:25):
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're they're the algorithm will basically say,
(29:47):
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. Yeah, So
there's cookies out there, and they've been around for a while,
(30:08):
and they're very easy to get, very easy to use,
and this is what Nielsen'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.
(30:28):
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
(30:50):
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 uh, maybe there's an awesome commercial that licensed,
Um the who's won't get fooled again, it's only license
for television. They can't show that same commercial online, so
(31:10):
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.
(31:31):
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
(31:52):
track this yet one and not everything's cleared for all
forms of media to the other problem with online viewing
is 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 that this is what
advertisers are salivating over, like hyper targeted ads. So like,
(32:15):
imagine if you and I are watching the same like
classic episode of 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 because I'm in my forties, you get a
ferrari ad because you're five or six years younger. Exactly,
(32:37):
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 you could
(32:58):
ever want, then again Nielsen's in big trouble. Well, there
are companies 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 every single platform you
can think of time shifted, on demand, streaming, live, whatever.
(33:18):
Calm scores as they can do it. Uh, NBC has
signed up with them and they haven't dropped Nilsen. You know,
they're just spending more money to try and get better tracking.
There's another company. They did that in the two thousand
fourteen Sochi 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
(33:43):
a video cassette distributor, but they realized that that was
going nowhere. In two thousand fourteen, even worse, they were Beta. Yes,
they've diversified into TV ratings and they use cable set
top boxes and right now have deals with seventy at
works and three TV stations and basically the competition. David Poltrak,
(34:05):
he's a chief research officer 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 company called Arbitron, which is
(34:30):
a specialist in radio and out of home measurement, and
I think there was an anti trust 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 Eater, And I
(34:51):
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 five percent
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 getting. If you're an advertiser, that's like a
(35:15):
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
fift percent of the advertising or viewing audience on accounting
for is not acceptable to me. Not in modern America, buddy.
This is what I think is gonna happen. I think
(35:35):
they're gonna get their their jazz together UM and be
able to track who watches a show down to 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 like
(35:57):
a three sixty deal. Basically, like this 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 of
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,
(36:20):
like down to this granular detail, your shows are more
likely to be saved. Our show, again, I say, would
not have been held by any of this. But the
whole reason community was online or 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 traditionally speaking,
(36:43):
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 is going to start taking Twitter trending
(37:03):
into account into its ratings. And I think they think
Nielsen has a deal with Facebook too, right, I believe.
So you have to try and uh, see again, 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. Um,
(37:24):
so really neat inventive shows that don't get a huge
national audience, well, maybe have a longer life. We might
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 stars almost
(37:45):
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 his movies though right well now he does. He
knows all about the stuff. He does TV as well.
But he's just talking to him is like he's always
one step ahead. He's very very forward thinking guy, and
(38:10):
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 the hot Tub time Machine poster. That's right, that's
how we first met him, right, that's pretty cool. Uh.
(38:30):
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, Yeah,
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. Do you know? He's sold out like
(38:51):
two shows at Madison Square Gardens and like apparently he's
the only one to ever do that. He's huge. What
do you 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. You know, if
his name isn't Willie Nelson, then I don't know him. Well. Anyways,
(39:14):
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 it's
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 work working out a
(39:35):
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 trip. Yeah, it's
no good enter stuff. You should know from the first
(39:57):
time I listen 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. Although it's funny, in the end,
(40:17):
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. She's she's
on the air. Uh, and that is from Angel, Cartagena
and Bethel, Connecticut or on Hell. I wondered about that,
(40:40):
he says, PS if this 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 he's in 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,
(41:00):
if you want to let us know how to pronounce
your name, We're always happy to hear from buddies out
there who listen in listening Land. You can tweak to
us at s y s K podcast. You can post
the pronunciation of your name on Facebook dot com, slash
stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and
as always, hang out with us at our home on
(41:21):
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com Stuff You
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