Sadly, we no longer see any live or live+7 data for cable shows (we used to see some at least for the top 40 cable shows – but only L+7, not the top 40 “time shifted” so we don’t really miss it much ). I’m not sure how that applies here.

“I do enjoy access to dual feed cable networks and wish I could get the east coast feed for the broadcast networks, so that it could also apply, but since our regular overnight reporting is only for broadcast, the dual feed cable issue doesn’t come into play.”

Yah, that was originally part of an unrelated explanation of why Live+7 minus Live doesn’t yield time-shifted viewing; it was the specificity of the window and nature of the “crediting” that I was trying to highlight. This particular effect apparently is never corrected in Live or Live+SD but is in Live+7.

This doesn’t apply to any of our broadcast overnight reporting though:

Live+7 may contain live viewing to dual feed cable networks between 3a-6a that was *not* included in the Live estimates

I do enjoy access to dual feed cable networks and wish I could get the east coast feed for the broadcast networks, so that it could also apply, but since our regular overnight reporting is only for broadcast, the dual feed cable issue doesn’t come into play.

“I’m personally not very interested in the precise mechanics of Nielsen sampling. If you are, feel free to research and share what you learn!”

Sound advice.

Well, I now know more about the NAVE IIc encoder than I ever expected. A couple of things seem clear: (1) A lot of effort has been put into embedding SID/AMOL information into the transmitted signals and deploying the equipment; (2) the encoders are supposed to know what local time is, reckoned from UTC; (3) the meters report the embedded (by which I mean “VBI”; there is more steganography) tags as a first option.

I’ve found nothing to support the proposition that regular Central and Mountain broadcasts of, e.g., Supernatural are routinely counted as Smallville broadcasts in the Fast Affiliate data, which are indeed “non-time-zone-corrected” Live+SD as far as I can tell. It is perhaps illuminating to examine this note from Nielsen, though (emphasis added):

“Live+SD = Households tuning or Persons viewing a *program or time period* of a specific station or cable network, including VCR record, at the actual time the show was telecast, and any DVR playback tuning/viewing in the same processing day to pre-recorded program or time period that is shifted ‘back’ to original telecast time. The processing day is the same collection day used for daily processing; however, this will also include some households that are in different time zones than the market with which they are collected. As a result, data for some homes may be collected at 2am instead of 3am local time.”

One thing definitely implied here is that data for DMAs that cross time zones are deliberately gathered in a time-zone-aware fashion. Moreover,

“Live+7 may contain live viewing to dual feed cable networks between 3a-6a that was *not* included in the Live estimates. Program and time period data for these hours are collected the day after the dailies are processed and will not be included in the Live (or Live+SD) estimates. This includes viewing from an east coast home to a west coast feed between 3a-6a that would *credit back* to the dual feed program between 12-3a.”

Note the limited time frame under consideration; this certainly seems to conform with the intuitive (OK, my) notion of what would constitute a time-zone correction. I can imagine other such adjustments in the shorter term, such as the failure to embed or corruption of the SID tags, requiring “lineup verification,” that would require raw tuning data to be recomputed.

I don’t mean to be truculent, but I still can’t see an outfit that takes pains to separate live and DVD viewing of a show on a minute-by-minute basis distributing a named data product with the proposed systematic bias and no specific disclaimer. At least, I hope I’ve adduced some food for thought, although I think that’s a mixed metaphor.

FOX Broadcasting
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
10201 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
WB
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
4000 Warner Blvd
Burbank CA 91522
You know what to do.

Will we ever see a day when we order a series or OTA network in advance instead of after the fact?

Direct-to-DVD and digital already happens, though not on a scale that currently competes with TV viewing. I think it will be somewhere between “a while” and “never” before you see big budget, high quality content series purchased before they ever aired.

Back to the DVR thoughts. I would think that the majority of those that do not watch via DVR do not have access to one. One would think that TV viewing and sponsorship has to evolve to the various ways you can and will view media in the future. I just preordered TSCC season 2 in Blu-ray in a feeble attempt to sway anyone. It was the best way I thought I could vote. Will we ever see a day when we order a series or OTA network in advance instead of after the fact?

Missy: Supernatural L+7 for 3/26 was 3.699 million.

Also, there are many shows that I would not see without the benefit of DVR. Any family that has a young teen not yet driving that is active, is not around for many shows. My house would not know about many things from House, Lost to TSCC without a DVR.

I can see why Fox would be considering renewing Dollhouse taking into consideration more than just the ratings. (Blasphemy! I know, Robert. LOL)Its kinda shiny with buzz (both good and bad)and they don’t really have that outside of Idol. Fringe buzz has died off, Lie to Me is (I think) a good show, but like Bones– an unsung work horse, House and 24 are aging, Prison Break is done. TSCC turned out to be something of an embarrassment –lotsa hype, little return.

I don’t know what their pilot slate is looking like — that could be effecting the decision.

Ranking shows by day, maybe. ranking it against previous shows in said time slot. definitely.

But don’t skew the data on purpose to make shows look bad.

As long as it is the currency of how advertising is brokered, the data is relevant to predicting show futures. I’m personally not very interested in the precise mechanics of Nielsen sampling. If you are, feel free to research and share what you learn!

“Boris, Time Zone adjusted vs non time zone adjusted simply (and precisely) means that when it’s time zone adjusted markets that aired Idol from 7p-9pm, are measured from 7p-9pm.”

So the Fast Affiliate Ratings should be taken as a somewhat arbitrary puree of data streams meant for the local stations?

The additional weighting that I inferred (and may be completely incorrect about) would be added earlier, rather than later. Remember, only the preliminary national numbers are not time-zone adjusted. If there are simple things they can do to get the national preliminary numbers closer to the national finals I don’t see it making much difference since it’s all at the national level anyway and the preliminary numbers don’t really form the basis of anything other than us spectators who can’t wait!

The local affiliates see data for actual viewing and don’t care about national numbers, and the national numbers the advertisers used are allegedly the C3 ratings (which are final numbers, and certainly time-zone adjusted). It could be that the national preliminaries typically correlate well with the final numbers without additional weighting simply because the national people meter panel is small (although growing). You can read more here from Nielsen:

http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?vgnextoid=c1c8d69265245110VgnVCM100000ac0a260aRCRD

(note, they do talk about geographical weighting in that release — but not in precise terms).

“Holly, what Julia posted is correct and it is something I have already checked. The overnight fast affiliates are not time-zone adjusted”

But what then does “time zone adjusted” precisely mean? Clearly, *something* is being adjusted under either hypothesis, since the “coastal bias” still requires cooking in UTC differences, just in a peculiar fashion. I’ve heard of stranger things, but the further notion that some sort of weighting would later be applied to correct a deliberately introduced baseline error strains my credulity.

Sometimes, the networks order up special overnights that ARE time zone adjusted. FOX did this, for example with the American Idol premiere (for some reason I can’t find the Tuesday premiere, but for the Wednesday premiere on January 14 I actually have both the non-adjusted and time zone adjusted numbers for FOX/Idol. The differences, even for something as big as Idol are surprisingly small, but again, I chalk it up to coastal bias. In the non-time zone adjusted version FOX had an 11.7 adults 18-49 rating and 29.854 million viewers for the 8p-10p period. With the time zone adjustments that changed to an 11.8 adults 18-49 rating and 30.320 million viewers between for the 8p-10p period. So you’re basically looking at something that wound up with ~1% difference.

With shows like Idol not changing much, shows with half its audience will change even less. It’s not really that surprising to me for a couple of reasons. One, the smaller markets don’t matter as much as the bigger markets and while they do make more of a difference in big markets like Chicago, it’s still something that is spread out over a much bigger pie to the point of not making much difference. Also, and this will seem counter intuitive too, there are still a lot of people watching TV at 7pm and 8pm regardless.

It makes perfect sense to me at this point, but it’s something that was initially hard for me to wrap my brain around. One thing I don’t know, and I will check is whether there is any additional weighting that goes on with the fast nationals to make them wind up closer to the finals (i.e., do they give New York and Los Angeles more weighting than Chicago, even above and beyond the size differences of the markets to offset the time zone issues). I’ve always concluded that they did, but I will see what I can find out.

And I don’t look like her or Lanie Grace.

“What WE don’t need here [...]”

You are indeed rightfully the Queen of England, Guruji.

That’s what I’ve feared about all of the negativity being spread for months. It’s bad enough that Fox premieres a show on Friday, which is coined the deathslot (or a variation) in every news posting.

Fortunately the writers are doing some Positive articles on Chuck. Whether you believe me or not, I’ve never watched the show. I’m about as unbiased as it can be on that front.

Random thought #31: The bottom commentary (replies) should be more for visitors. The writers post the data.

Adjustments are usually only .1 up or down, and often nothing at all. There is a huge difference between the demo for Bones and the demo for Idol. If 1/3 of the top markets were reporting American Idol numbers for what was reported here as Bones yesterday, how could it keep the same demo results in the finals?

I agree, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but if you think about it, there really wouldn’t be much change from overnights to finals for the most part if that wasn’t actually the issue, with the exception of shows with overrun and preemptions, but there almost always are adjustments. Usually they are not significant without overrun or preemptions, but they are enough that there needs to be some reason behind it.

“They are based on whatever was being watched at, for example, 8 pm on Thursday on CW in every metered market. This is not exact, because the Central and Mountain timezones air shows an hour earlier. So the overnights are counting those timezones’ viewing of Supernatural as Smallville.”

The last sentence here strikes me as highly unlikely. “The data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns,” to quote the mother ship. The World Series football game example does not apply.

BZZT! Sorry, wrong answer! I am not a “cheerleader” for the show as you call it. I simply see a show that actually had a compelling story and intriguing characters that you simply don’t see very often on TV these days, when almost everything else is reality based garbage.

I also say that the show was far from perfect. After they came back from the break for Season 2, we were stuck with the non-compelling and frankly bland “Sarah 3 Dots” episodes which really killed the show’s otherwise excellent streak of episode quality. You could have removed all those and really not missed anything.

And again, ratings only go so far to say how good a show is. American Idol gets massive ratings, but is it quality TV? Hardly. It’s something the simpler people watch because they enjoy watching the people without talent.

Don’t just throw me blindly into the “mindless follower” pile, because I’m far from it.

I know it’s probablly too much to ask but I am going to ask anyway, I would love to know if CSI:NY went up or down in the 18-49 chart? Thanks.

Secondly, this website is called “TV by the numbers.” Seidman and Gorman have created a website based upon the notion, not a particularly extraordinary one, that TV networks base their programming decisions on ratings. They’ve done their best to come up with objective criteria to determine what’s coming back and what isn’t, based not on what shows they like, but on what the ratings say. And they’re using the same source as the networks.

If you’re reading into anything they’re saying that you shouldn’t be watching the shows you’re watching, then you’re misunderstanding what’s being said. Indeed, it could be argued that an implied argument made by the site’s very existence is that you should be watching what you like to see on TV. Because only by watching it, preferably live, are the shows you want to watch likely to be made.

What WE don’t need here are people who come in accusing the site runners of being “biased”, no matter how many times they’ve pointed out that the fans don’t know what they’re talking about when they come in here and say that everything is fine and the shows will be back.

Robert and Bill are trying to explicitly show you why that ain’t happening. That’s not being “biased”, that’s being INFORMATIVE.

Try to be informed instead of being a hater…or a fool.

What really irritates me about fans like Dan is that these “cheerleaders” cheer-led TSCC into the toilet. Everything was just fine to them, no matter how many problems the show actually had and the ratings proved it. If the fans had been more critical, perhaps the show runner would have paid more attention to where he was going wrong (doubtful premise, perhaps, but still…)

Guess what? I’m realistic. I know there’s a very slim chance that Terminator will get renewed, and I accept that. What I DON’T need are sites like this, who claim to stay objective, berating shows that I enjoy. It’s easy to see you’re taking jabs at fans by posting titles like this one. Maybe I’m just the fool for coming here week after week expecting something better.

Here’s an idea, why not pick a new show to hate on and let Terminator die in peace okay?

Not to mention Joss Whedon and his fans complaining the show got canceled just as it was trending up, like Firefly, etc.

Why bother taking the heat if you can delay the decision until after the season ends? Then nobody has a leg to stand on except to complain it was on Fridays at all.

I think FOX Studios is happier to tell the tale that renewal is being considered and FOX Broadcasting is fine letting them do that.

I don’t see it. I do see the demo breakdown of the 18-49 demo for DVR use, but I don’t see the P2 data for live plus 7.

I am I just an idiot?

I’d have to pull up the data, but I believe the C3 on DOLLHOUSE that week was 1.7 (rounded up) and for SUPERNANNY was right by it on the list. When DOLLHOUSE was pulling 1.5+ it was always beating it in the C3.