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