Can someone explain the ratings for me?

[thrasherpix]

As best as I can tell, the ratings for a TV series is based on millions who watched. So if 9.3 million watched, then it's a 9.3. If 28 million watched, then it gets a 28 score. Is this correct?

What is considered a good score?

I'm aware that sometimes it pays to see the continuation, like when viewership dropped and rise, and in some cases that's because of heavy marketing rather than people genuinely excited by the last show.

Thanks

 

[Skanky Vamp]

What is considered a good score?

It's more than just how many watched, it's also the demographic share. What's a good rating now? That's really hard to say because so few are watching cable and many of the ratings you see initially don't include DVR watches. Sports are the biggest numbers, but I would say nowadays any show that gets over a million day/date is doing good.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

No. 9.3 is 9.3% of the potential viewing audience. Basically, people who own TVs, and are likely to watch TV at that time. This is why I Love Lucy had a 58.8 TV rating in 1953, because 59% of everyone who was likely to have watched TV when it was on, was watching I Love Lucy. But that was back when only wealthy people could afford televisions, and only had four channels to watch. But today, 500 channels, plus video games, plus VCRs, plus DVD players, plus on demand, has reduced television's territory, so even the hits only get like 10%. Check the Wikipedia link I included, that will tell you what high ratings were in any given year.

 

[famicommander]

Ratings are the percentage of the overall audience watching at that moment. If a show scores a 1.0 rating that means it garnered 1% of the specified audience watching during the time it was airing.

 

[November]

Ooh this is interesting 🙂 I didnt know how they counted it. I thought it was only specific houses with the counters on them!
I figured streaming was easier to count views on. Now brining people back to watching as the episodes air the first time, they can get a better reading and control of the audience.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

Ah, the Nielsens. Yes, for a long time, the principal metric of radio and television ratings was self reporting by a sample size of about one thousand families. It was tweaked several times, (e.g. taking demographics into effect, like who in the house hold is watching, in the late 60s). There were other measurement methods, and it had it's problems, but it was accepted by both networks and advertisers as valid. Yes, by the tech of the day, you can't measure everyone. I'm sure it's easier, but streaming data is pretty weird and locked down. So, I assume they know who is watching, but they aren't sharing it.