Nieslon Ratings Sweeps Months?

[CochiseGuy]

Maybe Nielson needs to take rating more than twice a year?

November ratings month, we get great new programing from the networks, mostly in HD. What do we get in December? Reruns.

April is the next ratings month, what do we get in February & March? Reruns, and lousy low budget reality shows. Maybe if Nielson ran their ratings more than twice a year the networks might invest in more than 1 or 2 months in programs at a time? I can't believe advertisers pay rates based on Nov. & April ratings when they have to realize viewers just turn to something else in the "off months" when the networks air re-runs.

Kudos to Fox for premiering "24" in January with 4 hours of new programing in 2 days, and then new programing every week, even in "off ratings" months. They sure are milking "American Idol" to death, though.

With such a dearth of worthwhile shows to watch on the networks, I upgraded my Netflex account for more DVD's at a time. And the networks can't understand why they keep loosing viewership to other venues?????

And that's my rant for the year . . .

 

[Sean Mota]

The ratings are just a statistical sampling. Statiscal sampling can give you a picture of your entire population but neve guaranteed that you will see the same results if you were to sample the entire population. This is why the national census in the last census that was done stayed away from statistical sampling. It is well documented as well that the sampling could be skewed and wrong methodology used to give inacurrate results. This is why statistical sampling is mostly used as an estimate or as a statistical method where no other possibility could be used. Nielsens ratings are overated in this respect because it never gives you a real picture of the data but an estimate of data representation.

 

[BobaBird]

Ratings months are November, February, May and August. This Feb was bad because NBC pre-empted half the month for the Olympics and the other networks probably figured they didn't stand much of a chance anyways.