TVloop Blog

AdvertisingAge recently posted a feature in their 3 Minute Ad Age video segment that showed the Turner Broadcasting’s research chief taking the gloves off and laying into Forrester for shady research and Nielsen for it’s measurement process.   You can go directly to the video here.

First and foremost, I’m happy to see that I’m not the only one that has trouble understanding the Nielsen ratings when it comes to Live, Live+3, Live+7, LiveSD, etc.  Aside from needing a mathematics degree from MIT to understand what I’m reading, the almost contant publishing of new data and metrics makes it almost impossible to determine which shows and networks are truly doing better than their counterparts.  It’s no wonder broadcasters are seeing a dip in advertising revenue as someone then has to explain this stuff to your average consumer products marketing manager when they decide where to spend their budget.

So hats off to Jack Wakshlag for taking these research companies to task.  His gripe about Forrester revolves around a report they issued stating that the DVR was going to completely alter the business models of network TV.  The industry, Wall Street, and everyone else panicked and Wakshlag states that the report was based on faulty data.  From a recent survey of Lost viewers, we found that 21% watched via DVR while 68% watched the episode live as it aired on ABC. The remaining 11% watched it online after the fact.  So Wakshlag’s complaint may be well founded.

Regarding Nielsen ratings, I don’t know where to start.  I review the ratings reports as often as I can to see if there are any interesting nuggets to pick out for the blog, but they can be difficult to interpret and even harder to explain.  And Wakshlag makes a fantastic point that there is a lot of underlying behavior that goes into the ratings that cannot be explained by Nielsen.  Why do viewers watch the shows they watch? Why do they return the following week? Why do they start or stop watching a new or favorite show?  All of those things are better explained using research methodologies that Nielsen can’t deliver with their ratings panel of 14,000 viewers.  Stay tuned to tomorrow for an explanation of some better options.