Season 6 ratings

[Hatshepsut]

So a reet dog's breakfast then?

Best wishes,
Hatshepsut :wave:
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[skydiver]

Originally posted by Hatshepsut
Neilson gathers numbers in dozens of permutations. there are households, males 18-54, females 18-54, and other age groups, then a both males and females group....etc, etc, etc,

Surely it's only the people who make the programmes - plus a few anoraks - who are interested in the demographics? Why complicate things for everyone else?

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actually a lot of folks care. the male 18-54 (ish) is the most sought after group, followed quickly by the female 18-54....why....they have the most disposable income (on the average) and are the people most likely to spend money.

commercials cost money. not just thousands to millions to make but up to thousands per airing. if you have a limited budget, you're not gonna waste your time and money airing your commercial in a timeslot no one will see.

to use our local station as anexample.

it's an nbc affiliate so has the blockbuster nights of thursday and wendesday. on the average, a commercial in primetime thursday (which has the coveted 18-54 demographics) will cost a local advertisor 500 - 1000 per 30 seconds.

before west wing began, wednesday night commercials were about 200 dollars. now that west wing is a proven ratings winner, they run 400-500 each.
the station can use ratings to prove to advertisors that people are watching, so they can also charge more for the time.

On the other hand, saturday night nbc movies...the ratings suck. the average commercail goes for 150-200 each, with some going for far less.

and since time is so expensive, you don't want to waste a commercial on folks that won't appreciate it. LIke airing a tampon commercial in the super bowl. <G>

If you're an advertisor and you want to sell...retirement plans...you want to aim for the older segment of the population. so you look for a show that's watched by males or females over 54.

if you want to sell nintendo games, you look for the younger demographics. feminine hygiene products...shows with an overwhelming female audience. snap on tools...a show with overwhelming male demos.

try watching msnbc for a bit. you're going to see a lot of computer commercials, retirement plans, investment plans and the like. turn on nick at night or the cartoon network....toys and games and fast food.

if you as an advertisor truly want to reach the right audience, you target your ad towards the peopel most likely to appreciate it

 

[CynVision]

The paying for advertising by the number "eyeballs" peering at your ad vs. the number of clicks was the thought brought to Web banner advertising from TV. It failed in the Web format but seems to work fine for TV and print ads. The presentation of the ad is the same as showing a banner on a webpage, and the purchase of an item/service is equal to the "click." But somehow it failed on the Web.

Seems to me that there are a lot of car commercials during science fiction shows. And that windshield treatment stuff.

 

[Hatshepsut]

Originally posted by skydiver
actually a lot of folks care.

commercials cost money. not just thousands to millions to make but up to thousands per airing. if you have a limited budget, you're not gonna waste your time and money airing your commercial in a timeslot no one will see.

if you as an advertisor truly want to reach the right audience, you target your ad towards the peopel most likely to appreciate it

Yes, that's what I mean. People in the business would be interested - plus the anoraks - full stop.

So why not let them have all the boring details, and produce a simple set of figures of number of households tuned to X, Y, or Z for the rest of us who don't have a vested interest? Or a degree in statistical maths.

I'm not saying don't produce great indigestible wodges of statistics - just don't inflict them on the viewers. It seems a little O.T.T., not to say unnecessary.

Best wishes,
Hatshepsut :wave:

P.S. Aren't the ad. breaks for making a pot of tea, or going to the loo, or flipping over to the news and weather channels or checking e-mails etc.? Or is that just another quaint British aberration?
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[WingedThing]

Actually,the male 18-54 (ish) group is losing favor as "the most sought after group" for marketers because the trends in spending and television watching are changing....but the studios change very, very slowly so I don't think it will impact television shows oin the near future--including sci-fi ones.

 

[skydiver]

the brits are actually sorta lucky. here, our 14 minutes of commercials are broke up into 5-7 little breaks...other countries format differently, one big break or a couple of smaller ones.

 

[CynVision]

I wonder if we'll ever get a unbiased rating system. The code involved keeps their information private while seeming to provide a service that shows why we have the shows we do. But like someone said, the margin of error thoretically would be far greater than the sample it's based on. That's a bit squirly. I've always felt a bit distrustful of Neilsen being the be all and end all of TV research. We don't do that in other science things. We make two astronomy observertaries make confirmation of stuff in the sky. We have second studies on smoking. We're told to get a second oppinion before electing major surgery. So why is one firm so trusted for telling the world what the US viewing habits are?

The thing I'm trying to get used to about SciFi is it's policy of starting a show driectly after the final credits of the previous show are done. In other TV around here there's a break thrown there.

We're very fortunate that even when created for commercial-less Showtime, Stargate producers stuck to the four act format that allows for syndication to have reasonable start and end points for the US-style commercial breaks to be thrown in. We don't have to wonder if footage is missing as in Farscape with it's two minute "Euros." It shortchanges the people with more time for actual shows, but it's sort of nice we don't have a lot of uproar in story discussion with European people saying "but I saw this in episode X" and others might not see it because it was cut for commercial time. Farscape can claim that the Euros are not plot forwarding footage, but I'm feeling they're good character forwarding bits.

 

[skydiver]

the neilson system is a bad one. honestly, there were times when the station i worked at got a 'bad book' simply because the diaries were sent to people that don't watch us. I knwo that sounds silly but...well most of ABC's programming is youth oriented. Generally speaking NBC is adult oriented while CBS has shows that have a higher 'over 50' rating. (ie the kids watch ABC, the parents NBC, the grandparents CBS)...well if you send a bunch of the diaries to older citizens (let's say they're all over 60)...the results are gonna be skewed towards CBS shows.

Or let's say they all get sent to the west side of town, (where more of our affluent folks live) the results are gonna be skewed towards that group's viewing habits, not the true viewing habits of the whole city.

In reality the only 'fair' wat to do it, is to sample everysingle person in the city...and that's impossible.

I know several examples of 'good' shows that the nets pulled because they got bad ratings...they were really good shows, but IMHO they didn't give them enough time to build an audience. Way back when there were only 3 channels to watch, it didn't take a show long to build a viewership. NOw that the average cable customer has 50-500 channels to choose from, sometimes it takes them weeks just to find out a show is on, much less tune in.

Look at JAG. It started on NBC, they yanked it after a season, citing poor ratings. CBS bought the rights and it's been in the top 20 shows ever since (6 years now). NBC was too impatient and they lost a 'hit'.

unfortunately, there's not always another network waiting in the wings to 'save' a show

 

[CynVision]

We fans ranted and raved for a season six and Scifi stepped in to "save the show." But so scared I'm watching it die the Scifi channel death. The one where good show's don't die, they fade away.