Those Pesky Nielsens Just what is a Nielsen "rating" anyway? Or a "sweep?" for that matter? And what's " share"? Simply put, ratings are a scorecard of how many viewers watched a given TV program. The "sweeps" are those four months in the year- November, February, May and July- when ACNielsen Media International measures every local We exist to serve you, ou r client. We demonstrate this commi tme nt thro ugh ti me.li n e~s. accu racy, custo m:zed service and innovati•e retirement so lutions. For over 4 0 years, we· ·,e guided co mpanies li ke yours to main ta in a s uccessfu l retire ment progran . O ur approach is a tota: retireme nt so lu tion that adapts where many o th ers fa i l. Timely, infor mative
management re ports will keep yo u abre ast of a ll yo u need to know. It's the kind o f service that's made us the largest Actuarial fi rm based in the Carolin as. If you are not totally sa tis fi e d with you r retirement pl an admin istration, please call us. A ll too often, th e secret to success is simply kncw ing whom to ask 1
W. E. Stanley & Company, Inc.
TV market in detail in addition to its ongoing national surveys . Say there are 100 million homes with TV sets in the U.S. A 15 rating means 15 percent, or 15 million homes, were watching a given program. Of course not everybody watches TV all the time . The actual viewing audience- those people watching television - is called " Homes Using Television" or HUT. At 9 p.m., the peak
Since 1954 300 E. Wendover Avenue • Greensboro, "!'JC 27401 • (336) 273-9492
www. westanley.com for television viewing, the HUT is about 70. That is, 70 percent of television homes are watching something. (At 2 a.m . it's about 5 percent.) A typical prime-time HUT is 60, representing 60 million homes. The share is the calculation of what percentage the rating is of the HUT- what share of the available viewers did a program reach? A 15 rat· ing out of a typical HUT of 60 is a 25 share because 15 is 25 percent of 60. But how does Nielsen know who is watching what? For the 4,800 fami lies who agree, Nielsen invades their home and wires up a computer device to their TV set, VCR and cable box. This device- the people meter- can tell, from the flow of electricity and the position of knobs and buttons, which television station or cable channel the
~lei·cbaiulising So I 42
11 t, i
o
ro v 2mber 2000
11 s
television is tuned to. At about 2 a.m . each night, a bank of Nielsen computers in Dunedin, Fla., calls those 4,800 meters and downloads the previous day's viewing data. They are published by 3 p.m . the following day.
greater charlotte b iz