Note: The February 2009 sweeps period was moved to March so that the ratings would not be affected by any problems created by the
February 17th switchover of the USA's analog broadcast television signals to digital. When, in early February, the digital transition date was moved to June 12, the "February" sweeps period for 2009 remained in March.
Criticism of ratings systems
There is some public critique regarding accuracy and potential bias within Nielsen's rating system. In June 2006, however, Nielsen announced a plan to revamp its entire methodology to include all types of media viewing in its sample.
Since viewers are aware of being part of the Nielsen sample, it can lead to
response bias in recording and viewing habits. Audience counts gathered by the self-reporting diary methodology are sometimes higher than those gathered by the electronic meters which provide less opportunity for response bias. This trend seems to be more common for news programming and popular prime time programming. Also, daytime viewing and late night viewing tend to be under-reported by the diary.
Another criticism of the measuring system itself is that it fails the most important criteria of a sample: it is not random in the statistical sense of the word. Only a small fraction of the population is selected and only those that actually accept are used as the sample size. There are only 25,000 total American households that participate in the Nielsen daily metered system. The number of households in the United States as of 2009 is about 117 million. As a result, the total number of Nielsen homes only amounts to 0.021% of the total American population, meaning that 99.979% of Americans have no input at all into what is actually being watched. Compounding matters is the fact that of the sample data that is collected, advertisers will not pay for time shifted (recorded for replay at a different time) programs rendering the 'raw' numbers useless. In many local areas, the difference between a rating that keeps a show on the air and one that will cancel it is so small as to be statistically insignificant, and yet the show that just happens to get the higher rating will survive. As the possible choices increase so does the margin of error resulting in the sampling sizes being too small.
In 2004,
News Corporation retained the services of
public relations firm Glover Park to launch a campaign aimed at delaying Nielsen's plan to replace its aging household electronic data collection methodology in larger local markets with its newer electronic People Meter system. The advocates in the public relations campaign charged that data derived from the newer People Meter system represented a bias toward underreporting minority viewing, which could lead to a de-facto discrimination in employment against minority actors and writers. Nielsen countered the campaign by revealing its sample composition counts. According to Nielsen Media Research's sample composition counts, , nationwide,
African American Households using People Meters represented 6.7% of the Nielsen sample, compared to 6.0% in the general population.
Latino Households represent 5.7% of the Nielsen sample, compared to 5.0% in the general population. By October 2006, News Corp. and Nielsen settled, with Nielsen agreeing to spend an additional $50 million to ensure that minority viewing was not being underreported by the new electronic people meter system.
Another criticism of the Nielsen ratings system is its lack of a system for measuring television audiences in environments outside the home, such as college dormitories, transport terminals, bars, and other public places where television is frequently viewed, often by large numbers of people in a common setting. In 2005, Nielsen announced plans to incorporate viewing by away-from-home college students into its sample. Internet TV viewing is another rapidly growing market for which Nielsen Ratings fail to account for viewer impact. Apple iTunes, atomfilms, YouTube, and some of the networks' own websites (e.g., ABC.com, CBS.com) provide full-length web-based programming, either subscription-based or ad-supported. Though web sites can already track popularity of a site and the
referring page, they can't track viewer
demographics. To both track this and expand their
market research offerings, Nielsen purchased NetRatings in 2007.
Furthermore, a new problem has developed primarily with the February sweeps. For the 2001-2002 season, the
National Football League moved
Super Bowl XXXVI to February, when it was placed in the sweeps period, because of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which postponed the NFL schedule a week. Because of that, starting with the 2003-04 season, the NFL moved the Super Bowl into the sweeps period.
Since the move of the Super Bowl into the sweeps period, Sunday nights in the sweeps period in February is almost guaranteed to be a winner for the network holding the big event on each of the four Sundays – the
Super Bowl (alternates among NBC, CBS, FOX),
Grammy Awards (moved to Sundays since 2003 except during Olympics, CBS),
Daytona 500 (finish moved into prime-time in 2007 until it was moved back to the daytime in 2010; FOX), or
Academy Awards (moved into the sweeps period in 2004, ABC) and every fourth year, the
Winter Olympic Games (next telecast 2010, NBC). The later games of the
World Series have also been played in November in recent years.
Annual top-rated shows
Nielsen began compiling ratings for television nationally beginning in 1950. Before that year, television ratings were compiled by a number of other sources, including
C. E. Hooper and
Variety. Hooper was bought out by Nielsen in February
1950.
These are the programs that finished with the highest average Nielsen rating in each television season:
See also
