The Nielsen ratings conspiracy mill was getting a bit low on grist. Fill 'er up boys!
ABC has asked Nielsen to investigate ratings from last Friday's installment of ABC World News with Charles Gibson. Friday, June 12 was also the day of the DTV transition, when stations switched off their analog signals and went to all-digital.
World News drew 4.09 total viewers that day, a drop of more than 3 million from the seasonal Friday average of 7.34 million viewers.
ABC News says that affiliates in Chicago and Philadelphia suffered from technical and reception problems the day of the switch, though it is too early to determine if those issues were the cause of the ratings quirk.
via Broadcasting & Cable.
Update: and the recount is on...
Nielsen Media Research has conceded making an error and is performing a recount after the company's ratings on Tuesday initially indicated that ABC's World News most likely had its smallest audience ever.
The dispute with Nielsen was a downer for the network after the entertainment division — keyed by the National Basketball Association finals — won in the prime-time ratings for the first week since September. It was ABC's most-watched week in the summer in five years, according to Nielsen.
More at USA Today
well that drop is alarming.
they are all now counted as HBO viewers
I don’t blame ABC for asking Nielsen to investigate it. A drop of 3 million viewers is VERY alarming!
This bit of info does lend support to my conspiracy theory of choice – Nielsen may oversample broadcast-only households, particularly in urban areas. I’ve often suspected this, particucuarly when reading dismissals of cable and satellite data collection as innaccurate because it “doesn’t represent households without cable,” and so on.
Its incredibl;e Nielsen is still the lone honcho allowed to do ratings. Things need to change.
Wow, that is extremely alarming. But it probably wasn’t because of the DTV switch. I thought that the DTV switch was going to affect only about 3 million at most. There’s no way that every person that lost signal was a World News viewer.
I, too, have asked Nielsen to investigate ratings before. Specifically, I’ve asked them to investigate the suspiciously low ratings that Dollhouse has received thus far. Of course, I lack the media coverage that a media giant such as “ABC” can receive from similar efforts. Still, though, I believe that through hard work, perserverance, and faith in Joss, the ratings for Dollhouse will rise in the fall.
Junior,
I somewhat agree with what you said; however, I find it difficult to believe that there is any accurate way to predict how many people were going to be affected by the DTV switch unless somebody personally went to each home or called each household. What likely happened was just like with any survey, they took a sampling, figured out a formula and plugged the numbers into that formula to “guesstimate” the number of viewers that would be affected by the switch. So the numbers are likely skewed; however, I do have a feeling that a good portion of the drop for ABC did come from the switch.
Junior,
Even if a few dozen households were affected by the DTV switch, the 3 million drop could be plausable because Nielsen uses an extrapolation method based on their test sample.
Oh but how come ONLY ABC was affected, and not the other 2?
Any murmurings from the other two Big networks (CBS, NBC) about similar problems, or was this contained to just ABC?
Clearly most viewers are poor and can’t afford TV’s. Those with money subscribe to HBO
Drew, since when NBC is a big network?
The reason that ONLY ABC was affected is because those morons went back to their OLD frequency instead of using the ones that the rest of the stations used. Channel 11 did the same thing. How do I know this? I called ABC on Saturday morning to find out WHY I couldn’t get ANY reception, even though I had already been using an analog-digital pass through converter box with no problem. That’s when the gentleman in the “DTV Conversion Dept.” explained what had happened and advised me to either get a New antenna (TERK HDTVA) or subscribe to basic cable. Well, neither of those solutions worked for me, so I had my husband adjust the antennas that he had already made and they worked fine. It seems that ABC doesn’t really care about losing the OTA (over-the-air) Viewers the have. It serves them right.
Nielsen’s reign is quickly crashing to an end.
Watch what happens in the coming year when the Cable association announces it has set-top data that measures viewership SECOND BY SECOND.
Nielsen’s limp outdated approach (and exhorbitant prices) will soon be over.
>> how come ONLY ABC was affected
All 11 ABC O&O stations went back to their original VHF frequencies.
This was not good for two main reasons:
1. A large number of the “HDTV” antennas sold in stores have little or no VHF capability to speak of. Post-transition, the ABC stations switched from their temporary UHF frequencies to their original VHF frequency. Bye-bye, UHF-only viewers (unless they’re super close to the transmitter towers).
2. If it’s anything like the Chicago affiliate, their signal is massively underpowered given their broadcasting conditions (4.75 kW?!?!?!)
…… ok but what does this mean for Chuck? Could Chuck’s numbers be getting an upward change too?
Well, seems some people out there don’t like ABC News becoming the official mouthpiece of the Obama administration. At least in the past they used to put on a charade…now with this June 24 healthcare special ‘Prescription for America’ broadcast directly from the white house that will only show ONE point-of-view, Obama’s, and not allow any counter-arguments from the republican side (ABC won’t even allow republican to air commercials during the broadcast), what do you expect?
The United States sounds more and more like communist Russia every day. You basically now have a government run news agency that will not allow or air any conflicting points of view on an issue.
hopey-changey indeed.