TV fans are all over the "Daylight Savings Time Killed My Show" meme today, but what are the numbers behind the meme (or myth)?
Last night (3/15) - Daylight Savings Time
Portion of Adults 18-49 watching TV at 8pm: 33.6%
Portion of Adults 18-49 watching TV at 9pm: 37%
Last Monday (3/8) - Standard Time
Portion of Adults 18-49 watching TV at 8pm: 37.1%
Portion of Adults 18-49 watching TV at 9pm: 39.1%
Conclusions
Did overall adults 18-49 TV viewing go down at 8-9pm from 3/8 to 3/15? Yes, by ~9.5%.
Was it all Daylight Savings Time? Who knows.
Will that excuse save my show? Only time will tell.
Call me stupid, but isn't 8 o'clock last week still 8 o'clock this week?
Title should instead be “Daylight Saving Time Killed Chuck“, which one could then argue should become “Daylight Saving Time Kills Bad Shows”. What about the shows that went up in the ratings? Is the overall trend in viewership only relevant on nights that Chuck tanks?
Stupid (hey you said to) not all of America or the world use DST, so the answer is no, in many places it was still 7pm.
Well, I for one went to gym last night and didn't watch tv. The weather was nice and the sun was still out.
Right you are, but at the end of the day we are on a blog that examines United States ratings in the United States alone, a place where the majority of people observe DST, so in the context of this blog melbye is correct.
Not many places in the US. Other than some small packets here and there, there's only Arizona and Hawaii. And the ratings we see on this site are based on the US only.
As for Melbye's question, yes it's still 8pm, but have you ever left the office at 6pm and it was dark? All I want to do when that happens is go home. But if it's still light out, I'm more likely to feel like going out. I'm not saying that's the reason ratings change, but it seems like the likely reason.
It wouldn't surprise me, but I doubt its an excuse more an explanation of bad ratings. That said I think House and Chuck will then be up next week. And if not well Chuck fans should be biting their nails.
Plus on a different note, is Law & Order more in danger now the Who Do You Think You Are? is pulling a 1.8 and L&O is low on mondays; could this harm renewal chances?
Share seems a sort of a silly measurement for this. I think total viewers 18-49 between the weeks would be more informative if you want to talk about people tuning in or out. There could be more older or younger folks tuning as a result of the time change. The numbers for the week in the Fall when the jump went the other way would be interesting, too.
I'd agree it would be a stupid argument, but there is evidence to suggest it has at least some merit for the 8PM hour.
March 2, 2009 – Episode 15 of Chuck: 2.4 rating, 6.62 M viewers
March 9, 2009 – Episode 16 of Chuck: 2.1 rating, 5.80 M viewers.
This happened last year to Chuck as well. Still not sure why. I can only guess people take more advantage of the extra hour of sunshine. Bear in mind, House was also down last night. But on all of the networks, the 9PM and 10PM ratings were comparable to prior weeks with similar competition. Hell, Law & Order did great last night compared to last week. 24 had a bit of an uptick in the overall viewers as well but a 0.1 drop in the rating. Not very much.
If there's a bounce upward next week for House and Chuck, then we should know. (and I'll try not to blame the DWTS premiere)
seeing that share is directly related to total viewers in a given demo, the only difference would be ease of reading since people understand 1 million 18-49 viewers better than 1% of the 18-49 population(that is not the actual relationship).
Law & Order is a special case, because NBC is certain to want it to beat Gunsmoke for longest-running series. Although I would say Who Do You Think You Are just found itself a place on the fall schedule. Those are good ratings against well-established shows.
An interesting comparison (although I don't know how possible it is from a logistical point of view) would be to compare the 18-49 this week to the 18-49 last time the CBS line-up for example was in repeats. It would be interesting to know if a section of people just don't TV watch when 'their' show is on.
I thought share is directly related to the total number of TVs in use (but not restricted to demo). If what you say is true, then share is even more useless because the change would only mean that 18-49's using TVs were watching less network TV this week than last week.
Okay so… this is the last time CBS repeated AWAY from the Olympic weeks of 2/15 and 2/22. This is 1/25:
Big Bang – 11.5 viewers – 4.0/10
2.5 Men 12.07 viewers – 3.8/9
HIMYM – 5.98 viewers – 2.1/6
Compared to last night:
Big Bang – 11.54 viewers – 3.8/10
2.5 Men 12.51 viewers – 3.8/10
HIMYM – 6.15 viewers – 2.0/6
Lurker, in this case share means the percentage of all 18-49 year olds in the country who were watching TV. To use simple, round numbers, if there are 1 million 18-49 year olds total, 33,600 were watching TV this week at 8 pm, and 37,100 were watching last week.
Lurker, I understand your confusion with Bill using “share”. Share as a Nielsen term measures the percentage of X (name your demo/metric) of the audience who was watching TV at the time. Bill however, was using share as a generic term (perhaps a mistake).
Of the total 18-49 population, last night on average 33.6 percent were watching TV at 8pm versus 37 percent the week before.
Now, if you see an 18-49 rating/share of 4.0/12 (House), in that context the 12 would represent 12 percent of the 33.6 percent.
Ah. Ok that makes more sense. You're right I was thinking in Nielsen terms.
Those are interesting numbers and do to some extent at least undercut the DST argument.
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I agree, poor choice of words on my part. I have changed “Share” in the post to “Portion”.