How do Channels find out how many people watched their programmes?

Question

How do Channels find out how many people watched their programmes?

They usually say 'the show was watched by 16 million viewers' and huge numbers like that...How do they find out how many viewers watched?

Answer 1

Phone surveys and computer surveys
they do a sampling of the television audience and extrapolate the results against the entire population of television watchers.

Answer 2

I had this system once. It from Nelson Something. Forgot the last name. It a little box that is connected to your tv cable system. For each person that is of age to monitor and operate that box is computed into the box. Each time that person or persons are watching a certain show you you have to click on your assigned number located on the box so it could be computed into the box harddrive. Each time the channed is changed or a person logged in would stop you had to click on your number again. Every so many month a rep would come to the house to download the informationl that has been put into the box. Not only could they tell what you watch but what age group watched as well. The best thing about it WE GOT PAID TO DO THIS. I mean I couldn't quit my day job but it was a good way to earn @ least $100.00 extra a month.

Answer 3

This is an explanation for the USA. The methodolgy works the same way in Canada....just be aware that the raw numbers will reflect their population at ten times greater than Canada.
Nielson uses a technique called STATISTICAL SAMPLING to rate the shows--the same technique that pollsters use to predict the outcome of elections.
Nielson creates a "Sample Audience" & then counts how many in that audience view each program. Nielson then extrapolates from the sample & estimates the number of viewers in the entire population watching the show. That's a simple way of explaining what is a compliated, extensive process.
Nielson relies mainly on information collected from TV set meters that it installs, & then combines this information with Huge Databases of the programs that appear on each TV station & cable channel.
To find out who is watching TV & what they are watching, the company gets around 5,000 households to agree to be part of the REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE for the national ratings estimates. Nielson's statistics show that 99 million households have TV's in the USA, so Nielson's sample is not very large. The key, therefore, is to be sure the sample is representative. Then TV's, homes, programs, & people are measured in a variety of ways.
To find out what people are watching, meters installed in the selected sample of homes track when TV sets are on & what channels they are tuned to.
A "BLACK BOX" which is just a computer & modem, gathers & sends all this information to the company's central computer every night. Then by monitoring what is on TV at any given time, the company is able to keep track of how many people watch which program.
Small boxes, placed near the TV sets of those in the Sample, measure who is watching by giving each member of the household a button to turn on & off to show when he or she begins & ends viewing. This information is also collected each night.
The national TV ratings largly rely on these meters. To ensure resonably accurate results, the company uses audits & quality checks & regularly compares the ratings it gets from different samples & measurement methods.
Participents in Nielson;s NATIONAL SAMPLES are randomly selected. Every U.S. household with a TV theretically has a chance to be part of the SAMPLE. The SAMPLE is also compared to the general population, & at times Nielson calls thousands of households to see if their TV sets are on & who is watching.
This research is worth BILLIONS of dollars. Adversiters pay to air their commercials on TV programs using rates that are based on Nielson's data. Programmers also use Nielson's data to decide which shows to keep & which to cancel. A show that has several Million Viewers may seem popular to us, but a network may need Millions more watching that program to make it a Financial Sucess. That's why some shows with a LOYAL FOLLOWING still get cancelled.
LATER:>>>>REBELCAT.****

Answer 4

Hmm.. I visited a friends house about 2 months ago, and he had this device that lets the Network know what is being watched. I guess they figure it out from there. I've also heard that the signal strength has to be increased when more people tune in, and that's a way that they would find out how many people, but I highly doubt that though.

Answer 5

i bet that cable companys and sattelite companies are able to track it

they also have something called neilson ratings, familys picksed at random to fill out surveys of what channels and shows they watch, I did it once, it was fun, just randomly picked for it, but I dont know how they can get the counts in the millions when not that many are selected for the survey

Answer 6

The survey a sample of the population and then figure it to represent the total households with TVs.

Answer 7

MAN I DON'T KNOW EITHER
IT BAFFLES ME