Comments on: Nielsen Corrects ABC World News Ratings

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:11:52 +0000

clutz, my guess is that a lot of stations changed something in their signal or channel or whatever and Nielsen wasn’t counting that as those stations yet. If that makes sense.

By: clutz

clutz — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:04:25 +0000

So they were not counting the digital channels when the news was broadcast, because those channels were supposed to be analog at that time? That still does not make sense to me. I don’t see why they weren’t counting every possible channel that every meter was reading. If they notice the equivalent of 2 million viewers watching some “different” channel (meters registering something other than ABC analog), they should have figured out what that channel was, IMHO.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:51:28 +0000

clutz, my information goes only as far as those B&C articles, but while the ABC miscount is related to the DTV switch, it doesn’t have anything to do with the “digital unready” households, and instead that Nielsen was not counting the proper channels for some ABC affiliates because the timing of the switch in some local markets was out of sync with their counting.

By: clutz

clutz — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:36:13 +0000

Their reasoning does not fly with me. If a Nielsen home was ready for the conversion on time, why would it matter if they were analog or digital? The meter would be counting no matter what, wouldn’t it?

And if only 2.5 million households are without TV, were 2.25 of them watching ABC News?

By: Catherine

Catherine — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:58:36 +0000

In a logical world Nielsen just could have told everyone that they were not counting anyone on that day due to the time staggering of the digital switch on Friday. If the nightly news numbers were off wouldn’t the rest of the shows, the ones that don’t have a consistent daily average for comparison, be off too? Of course that was why the all important February ratings period was postponed until March specifically to avoid the February digital switch. They KNEW the digital switch would cause ratings problems.

By: InsulinJunkie

InsulinJunkie — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:31:46 +0000

>>> A number of ABC affiliates made the switch from analog to digital before the midnight deadline, and as a result were counted incorrectly, Nielsen says.

The majority of stations had switched before midnight.

Geez, Chicago and Milwaukee were mostly switched by noon, although it was somewhat staggered. There was an instance or two where a station in one market had to wait for a station in another market to pull the plug on their analog, so it would free up the frequency.

By: Joss's Biggest Fan

Joss's Biggest Fan — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:41:07 +0000

Woohoo! This gives me new hope that those nasty Nielsen people will revise Dollhouse’s ratings up, up, up where they belong!

93 days til Dollhouse comes back! Hip hip hooray!