Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here with another Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know select this week everyone, I picked out
Speaker 1: an episode about TV ratings because I don't know. I
Speaker 1: love TV and it's interesting. This from September two, fourteen,
Speaker 1: and I hope you enjoyed. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuckers Bryant, and there's Jerry W. Jerre Rowland. Actually, Jerry
Speaker 1: has been canceled, okay, due to low ratings. You know
Speaker 1: it's funny, is um? Jerry has been portrayed on television
Speaker 1: and a TV show that was canceled due to poor ratings,
Speaker 1: poor ratings. That was our show. That was our show.
Speaker 1: We had a television show once. It was called Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. It was a slightly fictionalized version of
Speaker 1: our life, our work life. We made a sitcom. Yeah
Speaker 1: we did. It's pretty cool and a lot of people
Speaker 1: loved it, and a lot of people are like, what
Speaker 1: in the world did you do it that way? For?
Speaker 1: So that a lot it's like basically ten and ten.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're referring to the Tony people who've seen
Speaker 1: this show. Yeah, actually we'll get to that all. But we, um,
Speaker 1: we know a little bit about how TV ratings work
Speaker 1: because of that, and uh, in some ways, I believe
Speaker 1: we're a victim of the antiquated system that is the
Speaker 1: Nielsen TV ratings. Now, dude, it's it's it's antiquated. Why
Speaker 1: it's changing. I do not disagree with the antiquated part.
Speaker 1: What I do disagree with is that had it been
Speaker 1: up to date, I think it would have had zero
Speaker 1: impact on our success. I don't know, man, I will
Speaker 1: say this to the people out there. What um, what
Speaker 1: the network did was they looked only at one number,
Speaker 1: which is the amount of people that sat down in
Speaker 1: front of their television set on a Saturday night live
Speaker 1: at ten pm to watch our show. Right. They did
Speaker 1: not count things that we'll talk about like online streaming
Speaker 1: or DVR um or anything like that, which is what
Speaker 1: makes it antiquated. Because it's it's changing, man, people aren't
Speaker 1: watching TV like they used to. But they're basing a
Speaker 1: lot of these uh decisions on a system that was
Speaker 1: designed in the nineteen fifties. So let's go back, man,
Speaker 1: it goes back even further than that. Back in the A. C.
Speaker 1: Nielsen Company started. At the time, people who were broadcasting
Speaker 1: radio wanted to know what people were listening to. So
Speaker 1: there are a lot of companies that would telephone up
Speaker 1: family at random and say, say, fella, what are you
Speaker 1: listening to right now on the old Victor Rola The
Speaker 1: Amazing Adventure AWA, and uh he'd say, hey, thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: bub talk to you later, and they'd hang up a
Speaker 1: nickel fill your trouble. So that they because we're talking
Speaker 1: depression at this time, um, well not later on, they
Speaker 1: wish the head a nickel. Here's a chicken for your pot.
Speaker 1: That's a Hoover reference. Man, you don't get those two
Speaker 1: often try to bust them out. So the Nielsen Company said,
Speaker 1: that's all fine and good. That's great that you guys
Speaker 1: are figuring out what people are listening to, but we
Speaker 1: have something even better because we are a technological powerhouse.
Speaker 1: And what they did was they randomly picked some families
Speaker 1: around America and said, say, can we put this cool
Speaker 1: recording device in your home near your radio and it
Speaker 1: will record what you're listening to at any given time,
Speaker 1: and then we'll send technicians out to pick it up
Speaker 1: from time to time to get the information off of
Speaker 1: it and then bring it back so we can keep
Speaker 1: recording it. And family said sure, and the Nielsen Company's
Speaker 1: domination of broadcast ratings was sealed. After that point, everybody
Speaker 1: from every competitor they had was just peanuts can here
Speaker 1: to the Nielsen Company, so much so that when you
Speaker 1: hear TV ratings, it's synonymous with Nielsen ratings, very much
Speaker 1: like Kleenex and UH facial tissue are one and the
Speaker 1: same same thing thanks to Nielsen's technological powerhouse. The irony
Speaker 1: of it, though, is that once they started installing those
Speaker 1: boxes in the twenties or thirties, and then they moved
Speaker 1: on to television sets, the innovation, I mean they innovated
Speaker 1: somewhat fundamentally principally, it remained the same until a year
Speaker 1: or two ago. Yeah, and they're not, um, we'll get
Speaker 1: into all the hardware of the the hardware side of
Speaker 1: how it works. But what they did in nur with
Speaker 1: send actual little diaries that you would fill out and
Speaker 1: pencil and send back. And they still do that today
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, even though in two thousand six
Speaker 1: they said they were going to stop they still send
Speaker 1: those little diaries and you get a little diary in
Speaker 1: the mail with five one dollar bill really in the
Speaker 1: envelope for your troubles. And they look like the modern nickel.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And they rely on lazy, dishonest people to
Speaker 1: fill out this card and mail it back and then
Speaker 1: go spend that five dollars on a on a grande
Speaker 1: a latte. It would have gotten a lot more. Oh man,
Speaker 1: you could have bought a car. But but that is
Speaker 1: the diary version. What UM and and the networks and
Speaker 1: advertisers have never liked the diary version. They still don't know.
Speaker 1: But it's what's called sweep sweek, which is hard to say.
Speaker 1: That's right, we'll get it sweeps in a second. But
Speaker 1: um what they mainly like to rely on are two
Speaker 1: different electronic hardware methods UM the set meters as in
Speaker 1: TV set and people meters. And right now they have
Speaker 1: by they plan to have more than sixty TV set meters.
Speaker 1: And this is just for the U. S and Canada,
Speaker 1: by the way, because everyone else is TV is weird. Yeah, simon,
Speaker 1: do you ever watched TV in different countries when you're
Speaker 1: traveling and stuff? Yes, And it is so much fun.
Speaker 1: It is fun, but after a while you're like, I
Speaker 1: really miss American TV. Yeah, but I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: traveling abroad, you shouldn't be watching a whole lot of
Speaker 1: it was like late night in the hotel. It's one
Speaker 1: of but it's one of the great pluses is you're
Speaker 1: just like, I don't feel like watching this, will go
Speaker 1: out and see the sights instead. Yeah. I think I
Speaker 1: was in Belgium watching TV with my buddy Brett years
Speaker 1: and years ago, and uh that was translated in English
Speaker 1: and subtitles and one of the characters said something and
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know if it was Flemish, and
Speaker 1: the other guy just looked and said I and it
Speaker 1: said me too. So we still say that today when
Speaker 1: we're responding me to do each other, we'll go I
Speaker 1: all those years later. So anyway, Um, the set, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I said there were SI in thirty one uh markets,
Speaker 1: TV markets, and then there are about thirty five thousand,
Speaker 1: I believe. Now people meeters in those homes. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: in about homes and those people meeters are more specific
Speaker 1: because you can have three people meeters in one house.
Speaker 1: We want to see what little Susie's watching. We want
Speaker 1: to see what her brother Randy's watching, and they won't
Speaker 1: see what her dad watches. Chafter everyone's gone to bed,
Speaker 1: so each one of them will have their own little
Speaker 1: people meeter that they'll turn on. And I always thought
Speaker 1: that these things were connected to your television like your
Speaker 1: cable box and it just kind of read the information.
Speaker 1: But they're actually listening devices. Isn't that weird? Totally blew
Speaker 1: my mind. So basically at the podcast and the way
Speaker 1: that the way that Nielsen figures out what TV show
Speaker 1: you're talking to is because they have a device that's
Speaker 1: connected to the Internet that um is eaves dropping on
Speaker 1: your TV. And they just in two thousand and six
Speaker 1: finally got to the point where they perfected this technology
Speaker 1: and they have of codes that broadcasters, the networks and
Speaker 1: the local affiliates have to put in to their audio
Speaker 1: stream the audio video stream that just the audio stream.
Speaker 1: Is it just audio? Yeah, but they're trying to come
Speaker 1: up with the video version. So basically, there's a a sound,
Speaker 1: there's a frequency that you can't hear. I don't even
Speaker 1: think your dog can hear it, but it comes through
Speaker 1: your TV and your Nielsen box can hear it. And
Speaker 1: it's a it's basically an audio fingerprint for a show.
Speaker 1: And when the Nielsen box here's that audio, it can
Speaker 1: be like, oh, well they're watching good Times right now.
Speaker 1: That's funny. I was just thinking that good Times, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I was like, no, I should say Three's
Speaker 1: Company instead. It's depends and then he said good Times.
Speaker 1: Although if you watch Good Times long enough, there's an
Speaker 1: episode of Three's Company coming on eventually on that channel.
Speaker 1: That's I think good Times maybe my favorite all time
Speaker 1: theme song. That's a good one. Oh man, it's so good,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. Did I tell you Henry Mancini did the
Speaker 1: the What's Happening theme song? Yes? What episode was that
Speaker 1: in just a few ago? That was number Stations? Because
Speaker 1: the sound that the short wave thing mean, so uh.
Speaker 1: That's how Nielsen's been figuring out what people are watching,
Speaker 1: which is mind blowing. It's also if it seems a
Speaker 1: little backwards, yeah, it may be emblematic of a larger
Speaker 1: systematic resistance towards technological improvement. Yeah, or if it seems
Speaker 1: a little small as far as the sample pool goes um,
Speaker 1: which it is it is. But what they do is
Speaker 1: they extrapolate that number, just like polsters do, and they say,
Speaker 1: well this, these are average markets, these are average families. Um,
Speaker 1: so if these eventually TV sets are watching this, we
Speaker 1: can pull that out and and do some sort of
Speaker 1: They probably do it on a chalkboard in a room.
Speaker 1: There's this one guy who has the piece of chalk
Speaker 1: and the rapp Late sets out and says, well, this
Speaker 1: is what America is watching, which always has bugged me,
Speaker 1: especially when you have a TV show that gets canceled.
Speaker 1: It is because it all comes down to just how
Speaker 1: representative is your sample. So there's six TV sets there
Speaker 1: by two thousand fifteen, right now in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: may have two thousand fourteen. There are a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixteen point three million TV sets in the US. So
Speaker 1: this is a very small sample size. But if the
Speaker 1: guy with the chalk um Bert can can come up
Speaker 1: with a very good representative portion of the US. Like
Speaker 1: there's this many um divorced Hispanic families, there's this many
Speaker 1: um gay Asian households. There's like this many you know,
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney voters, And like they take all these guys
Speaker 1: and put them together and it's a clear cross section
Speaker 1: of America. That's America. Baby, you should be able to
Speaker 1: extrapolate pretty pretty well from that, that's true. It just
Speaker 1: all depends on how good their statisticians are, that's right.
Speaker 1: And they do audits over the years and quality checks
Speaker 1: of course, and compare ratings from different samples. So it's
Speaker 1: not like they just said it, I saw we're doing it,
Speaker 1: although they sort of do that, but they do they
Speaker 1: do quality checks of course. Yeah. One of the problems
Speaker 1: is like there's been so few challenges from outside competition
Speaker 1: that Nielsen can do whatever it wants, and it's so
Speaker 1: powerful that it literally has the entire television industry at
Speaker 1: its feet. It decides what rating a TV show gets,
Speaker 1: and ultimately the whole point to all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: to TV ratings in general, is so that networks and
Speaker 1: their local affiliates can set advertising rates for advertisers. There's
Speaker 1: seventy eight billion dollars at stake. That's the advertising spent
Speaker 1: in a year on television, and it all comes down
Speaker 1: to what rating Nielsen, with their representative sample and their
Speaker 1: audio eavesdropping boxes and their five dollar bills in a
Speaker 1: paper diary, decide that your TV show got. That's right.
Speaker 1: That's the dirty little secret. Is that they don't care
Speaker 1: how many people are watching that TV show. They care
Speaker 1: about how many people are watching the commercials. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really what they're looking at, and more specifically what demographic,
Speaker 1: which is why I don't think we mentioned why the
Speaker 1: people meters are so valuable, because they want to get
Speaker 1: that specific demo so they can show advertisers eighteen to
Speaker 1: forty nine year olds. They spend a ton of money
Speaker 1: and they're watching, uh, they're watching Community, but no one
Speaker 1: else is, so we'll cancel Community, which is kind of crazy,
Speaker 1: as we'll see in a little a little while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but um, just quickly let me go over. I think
Speaker 1: most people know this. But if you've got a half
Speaker 1: hour TV show and um, you're gonna have twenty two
Speaker 1: minutes of uh TV show, then you're gonna have eight
Speaker 1: minutes of commercial. Six of those are national ads sold
Speaker 1: by the network, and then your local affiliate is that's
Speaker 1: where you're gonna get your awesome commercials. Hey just for
Speaker 1: the Wolfman two minutes worth or crazy Eddie. I remember
Speaker 1: was big up in the Northeast. And then so this
Speaker 1: is two thousand and six. I couldn't find one recently,
Speaker 1: but back in two thousand and six. You if you're
Speaker 1: buying a commercial slot from a local affiliate, you're gonna
Speaker 1: pay about a hundred dollars to two thousand dollars depending
Speaker 1: on This is during the daytime. This isn't like three am,
Speaker 1: but depending on what show. So, like back when Oprah
Speaker 1: was on, you could get a thirty second spot for
Speaker 1: ninety bucks you could affiliate. Yeah, you could also pay
Speaker 1: up to two thousand dollars for it, and then apparently
Speaker 1: you're going to double that for um a national ad
Speaker 1: for a thirty second spot during the day which isn't
Speaker 1: just not outlandish. Well that's how crazy, Eddie, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: or the Wolfman, they don't have a ton of money.
Speaker 1: Although I don't know a wolfman wore a lot of jewelry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. For those of you who don't know who
Speaker 1: the Wolfman is, we understand because you probably didn't live
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Yeah, I bet its Southeast. I bet it
Speaker 1: was on like WTVS and stuff. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is go type in Wolfman Donna gallery furniture into
Speaker 1: the YouTube's and it will show you some classic gallery
Speaker 1: furniture ads, or just type in hey, ask for the
Speaker 1: Wolfman no, ask for Donna. I don't remember that part.
Speaker 1: What you don't remember Donna his daughter with the hair.
Speaker 1: The whole premise of the ad man wanted you to
Speaker 1: come see him, and she'd say, hey, ask for the
Speaker 1: wolf Man. She go, no, ask for Donna. All right,
Speaker 1: Sweeps everyone's heard it. Um it is a bit everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone hears about you know this is SWEEPS weeks. That's
Speaker 1: when well, well we'll tell you what it is. This
Speaker 1: is the fact that the podcast. To me what SWEEPS week? Yeah,
Speaker 1: where it came from and why it exists. Well, in
Speaker 1: is when they started sending out those TV diaries and uh,
Speaker 1: they made a geographic sweep starting in the northeast across
Speaker 1: the country from east to west, and they collected the
Speaker 1: little booklets and those were our first reportings of TV writings.
Speaker 1: So before they had they had the eavesdropping boxes that
Speaker 1: they were using. But it was basically like um, this
Speaker 1: this These are I think maybe up to twenty thousand
Speaker 1: households at one point in the major markets. The the
Speaker 1: great thing about the paper diaries is they could go
Speaker 1: into local markets, smaller markets and find out not just
Speaker 1: what you know, the people in New York or l
Speaker 1: A or Chicago were watching, but what the people and
Speaker 1: you know Santa Fe were watching too, or you know
Speaker 1: Fort Lauderdale. Yeah, those are saying, how does it play
Speaker 1: in Santa Fe? Sheboygan or something probably or Walla, Walla,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. It may have been a movie thing too,
Speaker 1: but that there's an industry saying how does it play
Speaker 1: in the city. It's out of rhyme, because that's what matters,
Speaker 1: you know. Of course New York, in l A and
Speaker 1: the major markets are going to consume. Uh, they want
Speaker 1: to know what your average household wants to see, right,
Speaker 1: And this is this is the first time that anyone
Speaker 1: had ever taken a really comprehensive snapshot of what America
Speaker 1: was watching in a given week. And so they said, hey,
Speaker 1: this worked really well. We're gonna start doing this every year.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have what's now called a sweeps week and
Speaker 1: it's going to be on this week. And so the
Speaker 1: TV executive said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Sweeps Week, this is what we're gonna start setting our
Speaker 1: advertising rates against. And it's going to be this week,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to do the craziest stuff I can
Speaker 1: think of to get ratings as as big and wide
Speaker 1: as I possibly can grab on that week, and that
Speaker 1: is where sweep Sweet came from. And we've seen some
Speaker 1: pretty interesting things as a result of Sweeps weak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's um a great tradition of stunt casting during sweeps week.
Speaker 1: Justin Bieber will show up on c S. I. I
Speaker 1: didn't see that one, did you? And I don't watch
Speaker 1: that show, and if I did, I would have punched
Speaker 1: my TV if he showed up on it. Um, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna shoot JR, you're gonna do it during sweeps weeks.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. The late night talk shows are gonna load
Speaker 1: up their their biggest A list guests during sweeps week.
Speaker 1: E R did a live show. Yeah. I actually watched
Speaker 1: that one, and I wasn't an e R fan. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to see if they could pull it off.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, it's pretty cool. Ellen used to have a
Speaker 1: sitcom based on her life and she came out on
Speaker 1: that show during sweep sweek. Oh yeah, that's right. And
Speaker 1: very famously there was a not one, not too but
Speaker 1: thrice part Happy Days where Fonzie jumps a shark on
Speaker 1: water skis that sweeps that happened during sweep Sweek. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a sweeps failure. Well, i'll know if people watched it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't guess you can call it a failure because
Speaker 1: that's probably US iconic. Yeah, it's part of the lexicon.
Speaker 1: Now do you remember an arrested development where Henry Winkler
Speaker 1: jumps over Shark Classic. Uh, these days, sweep Sweek is
Speaker 1: actually sixteen weeks because they have I don't know, but
Speaker 1: narrowed it down. They broadened it out to four four
Speaker 1: week periods in November of February, May and July, and um,
Speaker 1: they still tried out uh special things for sweeps but
Speaker 1: it's not It definitely doesn't have the teeth that it
Speaker 1: used to because the way that people consume media these days,
Speaker 1: which we're gonna you know, start getting into. So no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have the teeth that it used to. And
Speaker 1: and as a result, um, a lot of networks have
Speaker 1: kind of stopped, like you said, doing the stunt casting
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. But it's still as a um, um,
Speaker 1: it's still basically holding broadcast TV hostage because that is
Speaker 1: still what advertisers want to see, Well, what are your
Speaker 1: ratings during sweeps Week? And that's what they set their
Speaker 1: ad rates against So the fact that there are these
Speaker 1: four month long sweeps weeks, um means that the broadcasters
Speaker 1: have to follow the normal fall the summer broadcast model
Speaker 1: with reruns in between. Yeah. And this is for for NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox,
Speaker 1: like the major broadcast networks non cable networks, which is
Speaker 1: a completely dying beast. Yeah, because they rely exclusively on advertising,
Speaker 1: and cable has been eating their lunch because advertising has
Speaker 1: been going down. It looks like it's already peaked. It's
Speaker 1: still seventy eight million dollars billion billion. Yes, you're right,
Speaker 1: but cable takes a huge substantial portion of that in advertising.
Speaker 1: But then even when advertising rates go down, cable still
Speaker 1: survives because cable makes money off of subscriber fees yep,
Speaker 1: and transmission fees to yeah exactly, which is why a
Speaker 1: cable has a big leg up. And also they can, um,
Speaker 1: they don't have a traditional television season. They can release
Speaker 1: stuff all year long and uh, you can binge watch it, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is happening. That's that's the new model. So, like
Speaker 1: we said, for many years, um Nielsen was just kind
Speaker 1: of as this one Wired article, the Nielsen family is dead.
Speaker 1: Put it it was in a torpor. And the first
Speaker 1: thing that really perfect um the first thing that really
Speaker 1: roused um Nielsen was DVRs because when DVRs came along,
Speaker 1: the advertising industry was like, oh god, people can fast
Speaker 1: forward through ads now. Yeah, like they've always dreamed of
Speaker 1: doing exactly now they can. And it was the basically
Speaker 1: the television apocalypse and that didn't pan out because advertisers
Speaker 1: figured out that, yeah, people can ever, we can fast
Speaker 1: forward two ads, but there's ways to still get your
Speaker 1: message across at sixteen time speed. You can do things
Speaker 1: called popbusters where you use the actors or the look
Speaker 1: or the set of the TV show that you're advertising
Speaker 1: within to make them think like the show just came
Speaker 1: back on and you caught them yep. Because it's really
Speaker 1: an ad um there's all sorts of stuff you can do.
Speaker 1: So it hasn't been an advertising apocalypse. And as a result,
Speaker 1: because DVRs are clearly clearly here to stay and have
Speaker 1: been since you know, the early two thousand's, um Nielsen
Speaker 1: has had to kind of finally be like, Okay, we
Speaker 1: need to innovate a little bit and figure out how
Speaker 1: to include DVR because not everybody's sitting down at eight
Speaker 1: o'clock on a Monday night and watching Murder, she wrote,
Speaker 1: nobody is Man. I watched a couple of episodes the
Speaker 1: other night. I love that show. I've never seen one episode.
Speaker 1: What I know, man, it is good? Is it's good?
Speaker 1: M Another thing too? Uh just the backtrack is I've
Speaker 1: noticed lately is um, you're on demand watching, which a
Speaker 1: lot of cable companies. I'm a Comcast person by because
Speaker 1: I'm forced to be. Yeah, um yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: the the on demand shows now within the first like
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks that they're available, you can't fast
Speaker 1: forward through. Oh yeah, Like do you hit the fast
Speaker 1: forward button and a little null sign comes up and says, sorry,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to sit through this. The DVR, I
Speaker 1: guess the fact that the DVR is connected to the
Speaker 1: internet and is because it's getting show information. The the
Speaker 1: actual show is being recorded on your physical hard drive.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's cloud DVR recorders or whatever, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, there's a hard drive that's recording shows
Speaker 1: onto your DVR. And then the other capability is that
Speaker 1: is connected to the internet, which is where it gets
Speaker 1: show information and all that stuff to present to you.
Speaker 1: But the Internet, as you may have figured out by now,
Speaker 1: is a two way street. Not only can information be
Speaker 1: downloaded to your home, it can be uploaded. And that
Speaker 1: includes your preferences. How what shows you watch, um, how
Speaker 1: often you watch them, when you watch them, and so
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the DVR companies are like, hey,
Speaker 1: Nielsen's giving you guys like eight pm on NBC ratings.
Speaker 1: We've got all of these other ratings that they're not
Speaker 1: taking into account that you can get from us. Not
Speaker 1: only that, but they can actually tell when you're pausing
Speaker 1: your TV because the infamous nip slip hate even saying
Speaker 1: those words uh in the two thousand four Super Bowl
Speaker 1: with Janet Jackson, they uh TiVo the popular DVR company,
Speaker 1: although the people still use Tvo. They probably do. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's like every local cable company has their
Speaker 1: own dv R now it seems like it, but um,
Speaker 1: they were able to say that was the most replayed
Speaker 1: clip h in the history of TiVo up into that
Speaker 1: point was people pausing and rewinding. That's stupid, stupid stunt, right,
Speaker 1: But like you were saying, they've now decided. Um, But
Speaker 1: at least some networks have decided they're gonna start counting,
Speaker 1: Um what's it called the DVR I'm so better the
Speaker 1: DVR plus system, which is DVR UM live plus same day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the Nielsen method Live plus three days or Live
Speaker 1: plus three and then Live plus seven, which is obviously
Speaker 1: live plus same days if you just watch it later
Speaker 1: that night. UM plus three is three days within three days,
Speaker 1: and then seven is within that week. And I'm seeing
Speaker 1: like conflicting information out there. Seems like either they they
Speaker 1: now have basically just Live plus Live plus three, which
Speaker 1: is um like their main measurement. Well, what matters is
Speaker 1: what the advertisers say is what we care about, Like,
Speaker 1: you can have Live plus twenty, but if the advertisers
Speaker 1: are like, we don't care about Live plus twenty, that
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything for us. Exactly, it's true, but it
Speaker 1: sounds like you're right. Like at one point they tried
Speaker 1: to say that Live plus same Day is basically the
Speaker 1: same thing Nielsen did and the advertising and they wanted
Speaker 1: to lump it together with Live and and the advertisers like, no,
Speaker 1: that's really not the same. So because of the fast
Speaker 1: forwarding thing, Yeah, so let's at least separate these numbers
Speaker 1: out so we can look at it all individually. Yeah. UM.
Speaker 1: The thing is is the people who are watching TV,
Speaker 1: you know, I, EU and I UM, we don't care
Speaker 1: what the advertisers think, and they basically just need to
Speaker 1: keep up with our viewing habits, which are changing radically.
Speaker 1: The broadcast networks have lost seventeen percent of the most
Speaker 1: coveted demographic eighteen to forty nine year olds between two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve and two thirteen, sevent just gone. Part
Speaker 1: of that is because the networks put out terrible, terrible stuff,
Speaker 1: although so did the cable networks these days too. But
Speaker 1: another part of it is because broadcast is stuck in
Speaker 1: this sweep weeks sweeps week um certain time and on
Speaker 1: a certain day format that has been in forever since
Speaker 1: the fifties, and they're being basically held hostage by Nielsen's ratings.
Speaker 1: So there's been a real push to advance technologically and
Speaker 1: to start taking into account these other myriad ways that
Speaker 1: people consume television and uh, getting a clear picture of
Speaker 1: what an audience is doing, and the fact that it's
Speaker 1: now computer based and we have ways of tracking computers. Really,
Speaker 1: broadcasters are as excited as ever and we just have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do it, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about how they're trying to figure out how to do
Speaker 1: it right after this. Well, one thing before we get
Speaker 1: to the internet, UM that we haven't mentioned yet is
Speaker 1: you might hear in UH TV parlance the word share
Speaker 1: as opposed to rating. Uh. And what that is is
Speaker 1: a is a share is how many people are watching
Speaker 1: a certain TV show that are actually watching TV. UM.
Speaker 1: A rating is just how many people are watching it,
Speaker 1: But the share is how many people what share of
Speaker 1: people are watching a show that are watching something other
Speaker 1: people like? If your TV is off, it doesn't count.
Speaker 1: Know that your share numbers always gonna be higher. Yeah
Speaker 1: it is. But the rating is the number of people
Speaker 1: watching it compared to the entire population of America, right exactly.
Speaker 1: For Canada, Yeah, I keep forget about Canada. They steal
Speaker 1: our shows. UM. So now we're onto the the newest development.
Speaker 1: UM DVRs kind of threw a wrench in the plans,
Speaker 1: but they're trying to take those into account and they've
Speaker 1: they've been pretty successful, it seems like with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: once they settle on what they all agree is a
Speaker 1: valid thing measurement. Yeah, valid measurement um. But now, of course,
Speaker 1: people are consuming TV online more than ever, on their laptops,
Speaker 1: on their tablets, their mobile devices, and throughout some figures
Speaker 1: for you real quick, Chuck, please consider this A hundred
Speaker 1: and sixteen million television sets in the United States. There's
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirteen million tablets, Yeah, a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixties six million smartphones, and two hundred and forty three
Speaker 1: million Internet connected computers, double the amount of televisions in
Speaker 1: the US. And people are watching stuff whenever they want,
Speaker 1: however they want on this and as it stands right now,
Speaker 1: Nielsen is still trying to figure out how the heck
Speaker 1: they can most effectively track these people. Yeah, well, this
Speaker 1: is the the first year. Uh, this fall TV season
Speaker 1: will be the very first year that uh, they're gonna
Speaker 1: supposedly have a across the board measurement system with TV
Speaker 1: ratings that will include viewership on everything, including your mobile device,
Speaker 1: and has forced some innovation too, because the Nielson can't
Speaker 1: just say, oh, well, we'll add like an eavesdropper onto
Speaker 1: your tablet or your smartphone because it'll drain your battery. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What it will probably be is a is a third
Speaker 1: party app or a piece of software, and it makes sense.
Speaker 1: It seems like it would be easier than ever to
Speaker 1: track watching habits in the near future. Okay, it is.
Speaker 1: If your Google, if you're Nielsen, and you've been basically
Speaker 1: caught off guard by this since you know, you maybe
Speaker 1: started thinking about this in two thousand and eleven, then
Speaker 1: you're in deep trouble. There's a very very effective way
Speaker 1: of tracking computer use, Chuck, and it's called cookies. And
Speaker 1: cookies have been around forever, and they've gotten to the
Speaker 1: point now where they can plant cookies on your tablet,
Speaker 1: your smartphone, your computer. However, you have all these things
Speaker 1: you use, and after a while, just from paying attention
Speaker 1: to the data they're they're the algorithm will basically say,
Speaker 1: I think these three cookies over here are the same person,
Speaker 1: and they'll put them together and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: what was once three users is now one and the
Speaker 1: picture is that much clear of who binge watched season
Speaker 1: two of True Blood this week? You know. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: there's cookies out there, and they've been around for a while,
Speaker 1: and they're very easy to get, very easy to use,
Speaker 1: and this is what Nielsen's up against. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: may be saying yourself, well, who cares how people are
Speaker 1: watching it if it's online or on TV. But what
Speaker 1: matters is advertisers. Uh. If you've noticed, if you watch
Speaker 1: shows online like with Hulu or something, they're different commercials.
Speaker 1: You're not seeing the same stuff. And they still can't
Speaker 1: even decide now what to count because they don't want to. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, if if Brad Pitt does a pepsi commercial,
Speaker 1: he probably has it in his contract. Well, this can
Speaker 1: only run on on network on air TV in Thailand.
Speaker 1: Don't don't show me on Hulu. I don't want my
Speaker 1: commercial running online. If I show up in South Korea,
Speaker 1: you owe me ten million dollars. That's right. So they
Speaker 1: have a lot of control on how their images are seen.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they uh, maybe there's an awesome commercial that licensed,
Speaker 1: Um the who's won't get fooled again, it's only license
Speaker 1: for television. They can't show that same commercial online, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to show what some advertisers or or
Speaker 1: shows or networks might consider uh, substandard ad So they
Speaker 1: don't want to count that as a view. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the same applies to TV shows. To there there might
Speaker 1: be actors writers that are just for on air and
Speaker 1: not for video distribution or um, just like with the ads.
Speaker 1: So it seems to me like the the there's it's
Speaker 1: not just Nielsen's up against this. The networks are still
Speaker 1: trying to figure out things like TV everywhere, Like they
Speaker 1: want you to be able to watch TV everywhere you
Speaker 1: are at all times, because then they can serve you
Speaker 1: ads everywhere at all times and they can charge for
Speaker 1: those kind of things. But they can't say how to
Speaker 1: track this yet one and not everything's cleared for all
Speaker 1: forms of media to the other problem with online viewing
Speaker 1: is they don't have that all important demographic detail okay
Speaker 1: again though or they could though if they start using cookies,
Speaker 1: then they've got it right there that this is what
Speaker 1: advertisers are salivating over, like hyper targeted ads. So like,
Speaker 1: imagine if you and I are watching the same like
Speaker 1: classic episode of Saturday Night Live, and I'm watching on
Speaker 1: my computer, You're watching on your computer. We're sitting right
Speaker 1: next to each other. We pressed play at the same time,
Speaker 1: the ad break gets to the same spot at the
Speaker 1: same time, and then boom, two different ads come up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get because I'm in my forties, you get a
Speaker 1: ferrari ad because you're five or six years younger. Exactly,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what would happen to. So this is what
Speaker 1: advertisers want, like that level of targeted. But the Nielsen
Speaker 1: Company is still dominating. If they can catch up, the
Speaker 1: Nielsen Company will be around for another fifty hundred years.
Speaker 1: But again they're up against cookie tracking right now. And
Speaker 1: if somebody can come along and be like, hey man,
Speaker 1: we've got all of your second screen data you could
Speaker 1: ever want, then again Nielsen's in big trouble. Well, there
Speaker 1: are companies trying to do that. There's one called Calm
Speaker 1: Score that says they can offer a single metric that
Speaker 1: it shows who's watching television across every single platform you
Speaker 1: can think of time shifted, on demand, streaming, live, whatever.
Speaker 1: Calm scores as they can do it. Uh, NBC has
Speaker 1: signed up with them and they haven't dropped Nilsen. You know,
Speaker 1: they're just spending more money to try and get better tracking.
Speaker 1: There's another company. They did that in the two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen Sochi Olympics, right was at the trial. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's when they rolled it out. Supposedly was super successful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what they said. Um and then there's another one
Speaker 1: called ring Track that uh they their origins were just
Speaker 1: a video cassette distributor, but they realized that that was
Speaker 1: going nowhere. In two thousand fourteen, even worse, they were Beta. Yes,
Speaker 1: they've diversified into TV ratings and they use cable set
Speaker 1: top boxes and right now have deals with seventy at
Speaker 1: works and three TV stations and basically the competition. David Poltrak,
Speaker 1: he's a chief research officer for CBS Corporation, said that
Speaker 1: it's the competition on the research front is the most
Speaker 1: intense it's ever been and pretty exciting time. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Nielsen actually those um FTC antitrust settlement where I think
Speaker 1: the way I understand it is that Nielsen was using
Speaker 1: uh they they acquired a company called Arbitron, which is
Speaker 1: a specialist in radio and out of home measurement, and
Speaker 1: I think there was an anti trust suit saying like
Speaker 1: you can't be the only people using this. So they've
Speaker 1: now licensed that out. Uh we're forced, I think to
Speaker 1: license it out to Calm Score, who is now using
Speaker 1: that portable people meter, not purple people Eater, And I
Speaker 1: think I'm understanding that correctly. But the long and The
Speaker 1: short of it is, unless they get this right, they
Speaker 1: think they're missing out on as much as five percent
Speaker 1: of TV viewing is going unaccounted for at this point.
Speaker 1: So if you like you're a network or something like that,
Speaker 1: that's ad revenue, right, that's an ad rate hike that
Speaker 1: you aren't getting. If you're an advertiser, that's like a
Speaker 1: whole like ghost group that you may or may not
Speaker 1: be getting your product in front of. But like you
Speaker 1: can't say either way, Um, there's yeah, having ten or
Speaker 1: fift percent of the advertising or viewing audience on accounting
Speaker 1: for is not acceptable to me. Not in modern America, buddy.
Speaker 1: This is what I think is gonna happen. I think
Speaker 1: they're gonna get their their jazz together UM and be
Speaker 1: able to track who watches a show down to UM
Speaker 1: and the people who make the shows will sell a
Speaker 1: package to an advertiser, and the advertiser spot runs in
Speaker 1: that show no matter where it's consumed. So it's like
Speaker 1: a three sixty deal. Basically, like this is going to
Speaker 1: be broadcast live or broadcast on on the NEPs. It's
Speaker 1: going to be up on our player. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to watch it on tablet. But in all of
Speaker 1: these it's going to be when you buy an ad spot,
Speaker 1: it goes with the show, no matter where the show goes.
Speaker 1: I could. And then there's another happy aspect of tracking viewing,
Speaker 1: like down to this granular detail, your shows are more
Speaker 1: likely to be saved. Our show, again, I say, would
Speaker 1: not have been held by any of this. But the
Speaker 1: whole reason community was online or still on air, it
Speaker 1: was because the NBC was smart enough to be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, Like, yeah, it's ratings are abysmal traditionally speaking,
Speaker 1: but on Twitter it actually trends. It's like a worldwide
Speaker 1: trend that's valuable, and they figured out that this is
Speaker 1: this is something you have to take into account. Nielsen
Speaker 1: has as well. They launched a partnership with Twitter, who
Speaker 1: in turn bought like a basically a TV trend tracking service.
Speaker 1: So now Nielsen is going to start taking Twitter trending
Speaker 1: into account into its ratings. And I think they think
Speaker 1: Nielsen has a deal with Facebook too, right, I believe.
Speaker 1: So you have to try and uh, see again, what's trending?
Speaker 1: I guess yeah. And so now it's not just going
Speaker 1: to be how many people are watching, how many people
Speaker 1: are talking about it, how people like dress up like
Speaker 1: that character on you know that night, that kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: so really neat inventive shows that don't get a huge
Speaker 1: national audience, well, maybe have a longer life. We might
Speaker 1: still have freaks and geeks. It's the Yes, that would
Speaker 1: be nice. Although that was a perfect run and encapsulated
Speaker 1: in one season. Yeah, it's pretty great. And everyone on
Speaker 1: that show went on to be huge movie stars almost
Speaker 1: well not everyone, but a lot of them did most
Speaker 1: of them? Um Man. You know who if we would
Speaker 1: have had time, who we should have talked to you
Speaker 1: about this was Luke Ryan. Oh yeah, our buddy Luke
Speaker 1: is his movies though right well now he does. He
Speaker 1: knows all about the stuff. He does TV as well.
Speaker 1: But he's just talking to him is like he's always
Speaker 1: one step ahead. He's very very forward thinking guy, and
Speaker 1: I bet he would verify your theory on where we're headed,
Speaker 1: maybe tweak it. Well, Luke, if you're out there listening,
Speaker 1: let us know you'd better be listening. Um And also,
Speaker 1: I'm eternally grateful to Luke Ryan for my Billy's ABCA
Speaker 1: signed the hot Tub time Machine poster. That's right, that's
Speaker 1: how we first met him, right, that's pretty cool. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about Luke Ryan or
Speaker 1: TV ratings, you can type either of those two into
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com. Uh.
Speaker 1: And since I said Luke Ryan, not Luke Brian, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's different. I don't even know who. Look Brian is. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's a huge, big time country star. That's why I
Speaker 1: don't know who. Do you know? He's sold out like
Speaker 1: two shows at Madison Square Gardens and like apparently he's
Speaker 1: the only one to ever do that. He's huge. What
Speaker 1: do you people sell out multiple shows at Madison Square
Speaker 1: Garden all the time, Like Bruce sells out like six
Speaker 1: eight in a row. He's one of them. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: he broke like the time record or something, but he's
Speaker 1: a He's a good guy too though. You know, if
Speaker 1: his name isn't Willie Nelson, then I don't know him. Well. Anyways,
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this train conductor.
Speaker 1: I love that job. We had one that wrote in.
Speaker 1: Um Hey, guys, been wanting to write in for a
Speaker 1: while now. I've been waiting until I could think it's
Speaker 1: something interesting to relate to you. I found your podcast
Speaker 1: a while back in February is looking for something to
Speaker 1: listen to while I commute to work working out a
Speaker 1: pin station for the Long Island Railroad as a train conductor,
Speaker 1: means my hours tend to have me driving home anywhere
Speaker 1: from midnight to three am. Prior to finding your show,
Speaker 1: all I listened to our audiobooks or the radio. But
Speaker 1: I got bored with all that after a while, and
Speaker 1: I noticed my eyelids were getting heavier and heavier, which
Speaker 1: is about seventy miles door to door trip. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: no good enter stuff. You should know from the first
Speaker 1: time I listen to you, guys have been wide awake, amused,
Speaker 1: and attended the whole drive. That's why I want to
Speaker 1: thank you guys for keeping me alive, because if not
Speaker 1: for your show, I'm sure I would have fallen asleep
Speaker 1: and driven off the road. Ever since childhood, I've always
Speaker 1: been fascinated about history and learning how things work. Uh
Speaker 1: and was evident by me dismantling my toys and attempting
Speaker 1: to put them back together. Although it's funny, in the end,
Speaker 1: I always had extra parts. So again, thank you for
Speaker 1: accompanying me on my drive home. Every night. It's been
Speaker 1: nice having three friends in the car, although one of
Speaker 1: you is extremely silent. That's Jerry. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Jerry didn't get canceled. We were just joking. She's she's
Speaker 1: on the air. Uh, and that is from Angel, Cartagena
Speaker 1: and Bethel, Connecticut or on Hell. I wondered about that,
Speaker 1: he says, PS if this becomes listener male, I know
Speaker 1: you both try so hard to pronounce things. My last
Speaker 1: name is Cartagena, like the city in Romancing the Stone.
Speaker 1: But he didn't say if he's in Hell or Angel.
Speaker 1: If his last name is Cartagena, it's on Hell, I
Speaker 1: would think, but we'll see, we will see. Let us
Speaker 1: know on Hell. That's what I'm going with, all right. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to let us know how to pronounce
Speaker 1: your name, We're always happy to hear from buddies out
Speaker 1: there who listen in listening Land. You can tweak to
Speaker 1: us at s y s K podcast. You can post
Speaker 1: the pronunciation of your name on Facebook dot com, slash
Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and
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