How does ABC, TBS, NBC, etc, calculate their ratings? ?

Question

How do they know when I change the channel?

Answer 1

I'm not sure years ago it was by the Neilsons ratings, a bunch of people named Neilson were asked what they watched and it was a percentage of the U.S. population and that's how it was determined but now I understand that the cable networks have something to do with it

Answer 2

The don't know when you change your channel, but they know when some people do.

The Nielsen Company does Market Research.  Basically they have Nielsen families that either have a device attached to the television that records information of what the TV is tuned to, or they have a journal in which they write down what they watch.  The Journals are interesting from a television station's point of view because people may have watched the CBS station for their news but they watch more prime-time on NBC and the NBC station has a lot of identification during prime-time so when they go to write down what they watched they may write down NBC because it's more firmly in their mind.

The Nielsen company breaks down their information into numbers that stations can use it for things like selling ads and bragging about how good they are.  They do this during the Sweeps Months of July, November, February and May.  That's why all the TV shows have really exciting things happening then so they can get viewers and better ratings.

Answer 3

the Nielsen Research gets the ratings from a box that you are paid to have on top of your tv set. If you don't have one of these boxes they don't know when you change the channel. I am a part of the Nielsen internet survey. I installed a program in which they track all the websites I go to. This gives a rating to companies to see where people are going on websites. Then they make a decision what websites to advertise on.