How the Hell Do Nielsen Ratings Actually Work?
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only in theaters Friday with special engagements in Dolby. It is Thursday, March 6th. Despite how you may have felt about the Oscars, the Academy and ABC are feeling pretty good. The ratings went up a whole 1% from last year, 19.7 million viewers. That's according to Nielsen, which took into account the linear TV broadcast and the viewing on Hulu, the first for the Oscars.

Of course, it wasn't great when the Hulu broadcast just stopped for some people right in the big categories. But the Nielsen number took that into account. And despite competition for consumption data in the streaming age, Nielsen is still the most widely accepted arbiter of who's watching what. It's just harder now.

Viewership is fractured and time shifted. Advertisers want granular data on who exactly is watching and when. The stuff that the digital platforms like Facebook and the rest, they can provide them in excruciating detail.

Streamers hoard their data and cherry pick what they want to release in the streaming business. I'm looking at you, Apple TV Plus and Amazon. But Nielsen's status as a neutral third party has always made its numbers very valuable, all the way back to when Nielsen families were filling out viewing diaries by hand. Today, they use a sample size of about 44,000 people, and they've got the ability to gauge exactly what they're watching from things like audio cues, even outside the home, and

And all the companies that value this data, they pay a lot of money to be clients of Nielsen. So much that Paramount Global just went through a month-long standoff over money that was resolved.

We talk about Nielsen ratings a lot on the show, but we don't explain how these numbers are obtained. And most important, how they have changed in recent years, because they have changed a lot. We've got the addition of out-of-home viewing. They've got the big data information that drills down on viewership to supplement the surveys of viewers that Nielsen does. For instance, the Super Bowl, we were told, drew the largest audience for a single telecast in history.

But how do we know that? And can we really compare the latest numbers to the game 10 or 20 years ago? To discuss how audiences are counted by Nielsen and how that's changing, I've got Brian Fuhrer on the show. He's a senior VP at Nielsen, and he's going to walk us through this very important process and how we determine what's a hit and what's a bomb. So today is the Nielsen ratings and everything you've always wanted to know about how viewers are counted. From the Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

Okay, we are here with Brian Fuhrer, who is the SVP of Product Strategy at Nielsen. First of all, welcome. Great to be here, Matt. Big fan of the show. Oh, thanks.

We want to have you on because I feel like even within the industry, there is confusion about ratings. People don't actually know what Nielsen measures. Do they measure streaming? Do they combine it with TV? What do these numbers actually mean? Can we compare them to numbers from a decade, two decades ago? Lots of confusion out there because of the...

combination of streaming and television. So I just want to start with you explaining genuinely how the current Nielsen rating system works for a Joe Blow show that's on NBC and Peacock on a Tuesday night. How do the ratings work?

I appreciate the opportunity to do that because there's so much, even people that work with this data every day. Um, a lot of times don't really understand it. I have agents texting me. What are these numbers mean? Like that's your job. You're, you're, you have to advocate for your client. Like it's, it's ridiculous. So there's a couple of key points and, and I'll, I'll start at the, at the real basic. So we,

As you know, we start with a panel. We've got about 44,000 homes around the U.S. In those homes, we measure all the televisions. We have all the information about the homes and the people in them and what their ages, demographics, and backgrounds are. So that's the survey work you guys do. You're reaching out to these people, and they are Nielsen families, and they have their consumption monitored.

Correct. But we have electronic meters in their homes that measures all their TV consumption and the devices that deliver the content to the TV. So that's a really important layer that is on there as well.

Do you pay them? Do you pay Nielsen families? Well, we have to compensate them to comply with all the things we're asking them to do because, you know, it's a pain in the ass. Well, it is definitely a request. So we do offer them some compensation. But, you know, a lot of times people are very anxious to participate and let their vote be heard. Oh, yeah. I'd love to do it. I'm a fan.

officially putting myself out there. I would love to be a Nielsen family. Well, that's exactly part of it. We have to exclude people that shouldn't be, that have an inherent bias. And when we design the sample, we have to make sure that it is representative from a geographic, from an ethnic, from a demographic standpoint. All those things have to be balanced. But from a technology perspective, that's where I think things start to get interesting. And it's really a three-pronged stool, if you think about it. We work

really closely with our clients and they embed an inaudible audio code in all their transmissions, all the linear transmissions. Every two seconds is an audio code that people can't hear, but our meters in the homes do hear. And in that code, it tells us a unique identifier for that feed that might be the CBS high-def East feed and what the time is. And that's really important because it's one of the things

Over time, we had to adjust for time shifting and understand when something was broadcast versus when it was watched. Every piece of content that your participating networks or digital services are producing, that will have a hidden audio message in the show, in the content that signifies to Nielsen that

what is being watched and when it is being watched. So if I watch the late show with Stephen Colbert on the morning after, it will record that I am watching them. I'm a Colbert watcher on the morning after.

close that the code tells us what the feed is and what the time is. We have a separate feed from that we work with clients very closely on that tells us on that specific feed, what was the program. And it's a really, it's a very complex component because it's not like a TV guide. It has to be exact of the exact minute because what actually airs is generally not exactly what's scheduled.

Yeah, like the Oscars went over. Exactly. So you guys have to know that it went over what was scheduled and that for three hours and 45 minutes, the Oscars were airing on Sunday. And you, a few years ago, started integrating out-of-home viewing. And it has had a huge impact on the ratings for sports because obviously a lot of people watch sports out of the home. And the...

Consequently, the ratings for sports have gone up in many cases. How do you calculate the viewing out of the home? I've always wondered how you do that.

So we use the same technology that we use for radio, and it's a personal people meter, and we're working towards devices called wearables that also help. So it's an actual meter that instead of being home-based, is persons-based. Like an ankle bracelet, like you're on parole? Well, the old ones used to look like pagers. The newer ones look more like a device that, you know, like a smartwatch-type device is kind of where that's going.

Okay, so me, Nielsen family member, I go to my local bar to watch the Chiefs game. Nielsen would know that I did that.

Correct. And that device also helps us measure radio. If you drove in your car and listen to your radio on the way, it also picks that up. So that little different spin, but that device also gives us that. Okay. And what would you say the ultimate result of out-of-home viewing has been? How much has it improved visually?

sports ratings, for instance. Well, the big enhancement that has happened most recently is we went from about two-thirds of the country to 100% of the country. And the two-thirds was really ranked based on size of the market. And that's great for most media. But as you know, sports has affinity in markets that are not necessarily maybe the top market. Like you probably did not cover Kansas City because it's probably not in the top markets. And as I'm sure you learned...

70, 80% of the people watching something on Sunday afternoon are watching the Chiefs game.

That's right. And so that was the expansion that we've done in out of home in time for the Super Bowl to be able to really reflect all markets across the U.S. And, you know, I think it's for sports in particular, it was really important accomplishment. I mean, it also, though, it takes the comparability out of the equation here, because if somebody says, oh, the Super Bowl is getting 120 million viewers now when it used to get 10

10 years ago, 99 million viewers or whatever it was. Yeah, it's not that the Super Bowl is that much more popular now. It's that we are better accounting for the people who watch the Super Bowl based on the Nielsen technology. Is that right?

Sure. It's, you know, it's always an apples to apples thing. If you want to compare directly, you have to see what, what's included, but I would, you know, I argue it's actually a better number. It's more representative. Certainly the NFL loves it. It makes it seem like the NFL is way more popular now. Yeah. But it's, it's also important. It depends what you're trying to do, represent the total audience or compare on an exact measure. That's where you might need to restrict back. Yeah. I mean, I think generally speaking, we want,

the most accurate measurement. And it was sort of a joke that these Nielsen ratings did not cover out-of-home viewership because so many people are going to Oscar parties or watching sports at the bar or whatever.

Right. There's I mean, there's there's a lot of a lot of ways to argue that back and forth, you know, but we I think the out of home is is definitely a big in here. All right. So let's talk about your ability to measure both linear and digital viewership at once, because for your list that you put out, the top 10 streaming shows, originals, movies, there's a delay of about a month.

between the numbers that I get and when they aired. Are you just delaying that for the media and you give your clients the more urgent and up-to-date information? Or does it actually take you a month to come up with those lists? I'm really glad you asked this question because there's this perception out there that we're

that streaming isn't measured. We know we've got a lot of people working very hard to make sure that it is measured and delivered on a regular basis to our clients. Let's talk about two things quickly, both the gauge and the streaming top 10. We haven't even gotten into the gauge yet. Okay. Go ahead. We'll start with the top 10. It's the top layer really of data that we deliver to our clients. We deliver the data to clients on a weekly basis and

So the data is actually delivered a lot more quickly. We have to do a little extra work on streaming because we don't have that. When I explained to you about the encoding that happens, the active encoding, we don't have that advantage with a vast majority of nonlinear streaming. Oh, so Netflix will not put audio codes in their content. They don't. It's always an ongoing conversation. Yeah, they're Netflix, Mr. Transparency, they say they don't participate.

with you is what you're saying. No, they do. They do actually. But initially they were very reluctant, you know, when this all started, but over time, you know, we've developed, I think a very good relationship with Netflix and what we do. And this happens for all the major streamers. We actually go in to their databases and we capture audio records, audio signatures for all of the programs and episodes that they have. Oh, so you're doing it yourself.

You're not relying on them putting the audio codes in there themselves. Okay.

Well, we're not relying on putting the audio codes, but what they are doing is allowing us in because there's IP and everything else. We get that as quickly as possible. It really helps facilitate a much quicker processing. The reason that we delay is there are some situations and we get the vast majority of content is reported either that week or the week after. We've just been

you know, with what we're putting out in the public domain, it is delayed a little bit to make sure everything is fully captured and in and, you know, fully representative. So we don't have to do any updates and things like that. Okay. And Apple and Amazon are also participating like that?

Yes. Okay. Virtually all the streamers, you know, see this as a benefit now. You know, it's great to be able to tell all these great stories. They do? Apple and Amazon see this as a benefit? Well, they certainly like it when severance is in the top 10. Sure, but they are airtight. They do not release ratings, so to speak. They seem to be letting you in to do your thing, but they do not, when I ask, they do not give anything.

Well, that's certainly a decision on their part, what they want to do. Our objective is just to show a consistent view across the competitive landscape. And I think we've made great strides to get there.

This episode is brought to you by AMC+. Dark Winds is back. Produced by Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin, this all-new season of the critically acclaimed AMC Studios series has been praised for its exhilarating storytelling, breathtaking southwestern landscape, and captivating indigenous cast. Binge the first and second seasons now and stream season three of Dark Winds only on AMC+. Learn more at amcplus.com.

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When you put out a number, let's say, let's use the Oscars as an example. There was a preliminary number that went out on Monday that was not great. It was down 7% from last year. Then the next day, the official number was up 1%. It was 19.7 million viewers for the Oscars. How did you calculate that? And why did it change so much from the preliminary number?

Sure. No, it's not unlike anything that we do every day. We put out the first layer of data that goes out includes the panel data only without components like digital viewing. And that's what was what we shared. And those are the fast nationals. Yeah. And whenever that goes out, you know, there's the option to wait for the additional digital viewing to go in or not.

Yeah. Many do not wait. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. It's always, you know, kind of a if if you wanted the largest number, you would wait until, you know, live plus thirty five. But the objective was to get it out. And that's not unlike a lot of the things that we see, you know, across the board that's happening now that people are really straddling both linear and digital and really leaning into.

for example, the multi-platform companies with things like Peacock and Paramount Plus as they start to make things available across these platforms. We're really seeing a lot more traction of viewing of this

based on what your age is and, you know, what your preferred method of getting access to the show. Oh, sure. I imagine the streaming is all younger. And so what surprised you about the Oscars number? Why did it go up so much? And what was surprising about how it broke down? You know, we're still trying to understand all of those components. There's a lot of...

various things that happened in the Oscars with, you know, feeds breaking down and, you know, but, you know, and I don't mean that as a negative. It's, it's, it's very complicated. But, but there's a lot of ways that content is distributed. Is it to the mobile device from the mobile device to the, uh, to the TV? You know, so there's a lot of potential explanations, uh,

But do you attribute the rise in Oscar ratings to something the Oscars did during the telecast or to the fact that it was available on streaming for the first time and people who are cord nevers or cord cutters were able to watch it live? Well, that's certainly what, you know, the most likely explanation is. The same thing with Tubi in the Super Bowl. Sure. The Tubi number on the Super Bowl was huge.

Yeah, you know, and it's also interesting to look at the, you know, the audience comp across too. And those are things that we'll kind of get into in the gauge next month. Do you have a number for the Oscars on how many people watched on Hulu? I don't have that specifically in front of me, and I would certainly defer to Disney to talk about that. Yeah, they probably don't want you to release it, but maybe they will. All right, so let's get to the gauge. So you also produce once a month a...

pie chart of the viewing across all the different services on TVs. You don't do mobile for this, but what have you learned in doing this gauge rating for the past? What is it? Two years now year.

We started April of 21. Okay, so four years now. Okay. Yeah, it's initially I thought, this isn't that interesting. People aren't going to find this interesting. Just, you know, these four numbers and it's become almost a cottage industry. It's really been interesting. We love it. I mean, what it's really done is shown the pecking order on these services. I mean, I think the it's changed the entire perception of YouTube because it really shows how many people are watching YouTube online.

on their televisions because YouTube leads almost every month in percentage of time spent on televisions for streaming. And it's just changed the whole perception of that, especially within Hollywood.

That was the one thing that if anything popped out at me in the very beginning, back in 2017, before the gauge, we first started measuring with streaming platform ratings. The first tranche of data that came out, I said, well, this is wrong. There's no way YouTube can be that big on the TV screen. And back then it was much, much smaller. It's obviously grown. So it was a surprise in the beginning and they've continued to expand. And, you know, I don't think they get credit for the morphing that they've done.

The content, you know, back then, probably a lot more UGC. Now, you know, it's really expansions in so many different directions. And that's one thing that has certainly jumped out. What about the demos on YouTube? Do you have data on that? Because I would assume that most of the viewing on YouTube on TVs is,

People like my eight-year-old kid who is just watching his favorite, you know, fake Sonic the Hedgehog trailers on the TV via YouTube. But your demo, does your demo information match that or is it different? It's different. Now, it is well dispersed and definitely has a higher degree of kids. But I think...

or a higher percentage. But I do think what's really been surprising, especially in the past year, is a lot of the growth is people 50 plus. In fact, 65 plus. Yeah. And that's, you know, just to give you an idea, I was looking at January, January 23, January 24, January 25, kind of where they look, you know, and kids two to 11 now are about 18% of YouTube.

And people 65 plus make up about 15%. So it's, it's really, there's, there's so many different things that engage so many different viewers. That's what I think is the interesting thing. Does the YouTube number include Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, or is it just people watching videos via the YouTube app?

Yeah, thanks for asking that because that's maybe one of the biggest changes that we made in the gauge over that time. We've removed linear streaming. And by that, I mean the linear streaming apps, YouTube TV, Hulu Live, and all of the apps that are specifically designed because what it was doing was double counting that both in whether it's broadcast or cable and streaming. So we pulled those out and YouTube...

In February of 23, we removed YouTube TV and linear streaming from streaming overall, as well as Hulu Live. So the 10% number, 10.8% of all viewing on television is YouTube. That is not including Sunday Ticket or the linear app. That's right. Wow, that's wild. And it's like two percentage points above Netflix, which is the next biggest at 8.6%.

You also do this thing now, which I know the people at Disney love, is you do a gauge by company or by conglomerate or by platform. And that shows pretty consistently that Disney is the most watched company across its various platforms. Disney+, ESPN, all

all of them, ABC, and they end up actually beating Netflix. And this is an argument that the others have against Netflix in other arenas as well because Netflix is all in one place, all in one brand. Everything is Netflix. But you look at Disney, you look at

The NBC Universal platforms, like they have a lot of different brands from their digital service to their linear networks. And when you combine all those, they have more reach than Netflix. Is that accurate to say? Yeah. And that's the part that is really interesting month to month because we see these equalize. And for example, in January, Disney had a really good month because of the success of the CFP on ESPN. So they got a big month. Yeah.

And we see this certainly change month to month based on sports season, based on what's, and March may also have another effect. But I think it was a really good enhancement for the industry because people conveyed to me, they felt like if we were only showing the streamers and then showing everything else separately, it wasn't really giving a full view of the industry. Yeah. I mean, the content on ESPN right now, a lot of it is not available anywhere.

anywhere else in digital. So if you don't include that, it's sort of a misnomer on overall watching.

Yeah, I just think it's a good complement to the Gage Classic, as we call it, to be able to see those two perspectives. Oh, interesting. Okay, let's talk a little bit about creators because you had some data on the Mr. Beast Amazon show. And I have said on the show that, you know, they paid a lot for this show, over $100 million. And the ratings have been fine. But you have an interesting perspective on the Mr. Beast Amazon show.

Well, I just think across the board, it's going to be really interesting as we look at sources of new creative. And as YouTube morphs and the creators get bigger and bigger, I think we're going to see more and more from that perspective as well. And Mr. Beast

I think it did really well and brought a new and younger demo into Amazon. Now, you've got to understand, each of the platforms kind of has its own fingerprint from a demo perspective. And Amazon tends to always run SKU older because it mimics

you know, the buying service much more so. Right. It's people who get Prime and then those people watch Prime Video. So if you are 18 to 34 and you're not buying a lot of toilet paper and baby food, you're probably less likely to be a Prime member and less likely to watch Prime Video, which finally they have recognized this. And a lot of the shows on Amazon Prime are now kind of mimicking the CBS model, procedural, white guy with a gun, that kind of thing.

I think Amazon across the board has really pushed into other, uh, into content that, that, uh, uh,

really resonates with other audiences. Mr. Beast is a great example. It skewed younger and really brought, I think, a completely new audience over to even though, you know, maybe the numbers weren't as big as some people expected. They did represent, you know, an episodic kind of a release. It wasn't a, you know, the kind of thing that you could binge. And it did, I think, expose it to a different audience. So you think Mr. Beast is worth it for Amazon because of the demo bump?

That's the benefit, and it's certainly got a lot of buzz. And that's what I think a lot of this is. We talk about streaming services being like a track team and with these big high-profile titles being sprinters and then the deep libraries being more a long-distance runner. You get people in and they stay around longer. And I think that's what they're really working through. And it certainly was...

something that I think exposed new people to Amazon. All right, Brian, I'm going to go watch a Mr. Beast video, maybe contribute to your data. Thanks for coming on the show. We're back with a call sheet, Craig Bong Joon-ho, Mickey 17 in theaters this weekend, the long awaited follow-up to Parasite. Tracking not great for the cost on this one.

I'm excited for this movie, despite all of the negative facts you're about to throw at me about why you think this is going to underperform. All right. Yeah, I mean, it was moved around a bunch. They showed footage of this movie last year at CinemaCon. It was supposed to come out last year. It kept getting pushed. It finally landed on this early March date, which is a very weird date for a movie from a Best Picture winner. You would have thought it would be dropped into the awards corridor. It

is now not this movie would be fine if it didn't cost 120 million dollars like warners is even saying 118 as the number and it's quirky the tone is all around and it already opened to south korea has made nine million dollars there but the tracking is 20 million for this weekend and i don't think it's gonna get there i'm gonna take the under on 20.

I'm going to take the over. Oh, you are? In my little anecdotal bubble world, a lot of people are excited about this movie. I think it has a lot of buzz. I think Pattinson has a lot of goodwill. Pattinson does have value, and he's in it a lot. There's dozens of him. Yes, I think it's zany. It's a genre movie. These are the exact type of movies I am happy get made. $120 million is too much money, but these are the types of things that directors should be making and that people should be seeing.

I hate to quote Norm Macdonald here, but zany equals box office poison. I mean, typically not.

all audience. This movie has to gross about 300 million worldwide to be considered a hit. Parasite got there, but Parasite was a Best Picture winner. This movie might perform better overseas. Pattinson has the Twilight and Batman fans around the world, and maybe they are more accepting of Quirk, but I don't think in the U.S. it's going to be a big hit. Maybe I'd like to be wrong, actually. I think a lot of young movie lovers will go see this movie. Okay.

Well, this is the first of a string of Warner Brothers movies for this year that a lot of questions surrounding. So we're going to see how the slate from Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi starts performing this year. This is the first big one, and we'll have an early number to gauge how they're doing. So we'll be watching. All right. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Brian Fuhrer, producer Craig Horlbeck, art editor Jesse Lopez, and I want to thank you. We'll see you next week.