How do tv stations know how many people watched thier show? How is that number gathered?

Answer 1

There is a company, Nielson, that does a survey of homes and their television viewing habits. Every time these homes watch something they log it, even if it's for 5 minutes. The company then figures out the relative percentages based on their sample. For instance, let's say that half of their sample watched the Superbowl last year. If there are 300 million Americans, that means that roughly 150 million Americans watched the game. Then they remove some of the guesswork with other sampling and with statistical tools such as standard deviations, relative range, etc.

Answer 2

Nielson Ratings

http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/

Answer 3

Nielson is the company that does the ratings estimates. They hook up boxes to televieions in households around the nation. Those boxes give them an idea (about) how many veiwers that program have. The advertisers pay more for higher rating slots (such as superbowl or american Idol.)

Answer 4

This is where the "Nielson" ratings come in. A few thousand homes across the US are hooked up to a cable monitoring device that tracks what they watch, this is how ratings are derived.

Answer 5

Nielsen Ratings
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
When TV viewers or entertainment professionals in the United States mention "ratings" they are generally referring to Nielsen Ratings, a system developed by Nielsen Media Research to determine the audience size and composition of television programming. Nielsen Ratings are offered in over forty countries.

Other television audience measurement systems are available from other companies, as well as systems developed in joint ventures with Nielsen Media Research, such as AGB Nielsen Media Research. Arbitron has a ratings system for measuring the audience size and composition of radio programming.

Nielsen's ratings calculation, also called Cume Rating (or "Reach"), measures the number of unique viewers or households tuned to a television program in a particular time period during a week. The Cume itself is calculated by dividing the number of unique viewers or households by the total number of estimated available households/viewers/listeners possible. This gives a percentage Cume rating. [1]

The system has been updated and modified extensively since it was developed in the early 1960s by Arthur Nielsen, and has since been the primary source of audience measurement information in the television industry around the world. Since television as a business makes money by selling audiences to advertisers, the Nielsen Television Ratings are the single most important element in determining advertising rates, schedules, and program content.

The company is owned by Dutch conglomerate VNU. Its production operations are located in its Brooker Creek Global Technology and Information Center in Oldsmar, Florida.

Answer 6

I believe it's survey-based. Nielson Ratings has a panel of users who actual write down in journals exactly what shows they watch, when, and for how long. It's all a "best guess".

Answer 7

Check out this site about Nielson Ratings. It explains how it works and how the data is collected.

Answer 8

Nielson ratings....a group of people that watch the shows, I think they have monitoring devices on their tv's

Answer 9

Neilson, Arbitron and other companies collect this information. See really long article below.

Answer 10

It's called a Nielsen box. You have to be invited to be a part of the Nielsen studies.