NBC must be desperate for Olympic viewers

[tocaman]

Now there's some soccer I can watch...

 

[powerstrokin]

What I never understood is how "viewers"="money".

Also, how do "they" "know" when someone is even viewing?

If you tune into that channel for a minute to see just what is so "xxx" about it, what happens? Does their channel server log your cable/sat box's IP address or something and *POOF* magical dollars appear in their bank account? How does this work with people viewing channels "over the air"?

....So what was channel 603 actually showing?

 

[Expat]

I thought Vin Diesel was going to be on...

 

[bobbittle]

More viewers = more people watching commercials = more people buying products seen on commercials = companies spend more $$ advertising with network

 

[tocaman]

....So what was channel 603 actually showing?

It was the soccer games listed (USA won).

And see Nielsen ratings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for your other questions

 

[Mr Evilwrench]

Laugh's on them; commercials at best go into the bit bucket for me, and I'm far more likely to refuse to buy something whose commercial annoys or offends me.

 

[powerstrokin]

More viewers = more people watching commercials = more people buying products seen on commercials = companies spend more $$ advertising with network

Still doesn't make sense to me.

Just because I watch a channel does not mean I will buy products that have advertisements shown on said channel.

How does say, CNN "KNOW" how many viewers they have?

Even if they have a camera in every TV and see you when you turn to their channel, how does you watching it automatically equate to money in the bank somewhere? I guess the companies "pay per view" so that's all well and good- but leads back to HOW DO THEY KNOW?

If for one day every TV in the state of Indiana were turned off- HOW WOULD THEY KNOW?

I think the whole thing just reaks of a scam. Somewhere along the lines, it's all BS.

 

[terrehautian]

Working in the media, I can explain exactly how they know.

Nielsen is a company that publishes ratings books. They do ratings a number of ways. First one being a box on tvs that automatically record what you are watching, when, and how long. In ratings, they break the time periods into 15 minute periods. If you watch the 6pm news until 6:16, they count that as you watched them for 30 minutes. If you watched the news less then 15 minutes, it is only 15.

Another way they do it is via "books". They ask people to write down what they watch, what channel they watch, and how long.

In local television, ratings are everything! That is how they base how much they can charge for commercials. If you the top dog in your market, you can charge more for your time (for example, sometimes a 30 second commercial will $200 in the cheapest time {overnights} to $600 plus for most watched time {primetime, 6pm news, football, Superbowl}). Now on the opposite side, if you suck and so do your ratings, you can't charge hardly anything. You might get more ads, but for every 10 ads the cheap station sells, the other station(s) might make what the station sold ten in one ad.

The idea behind ads are, even you if you don't buy something then, you might be out and see "Joes BBQ" and though you might be hungry and going elsewhere, you might have seen a commercial that is catchy or the food looked good and might go there instead. If the commercial plays enough, chances are, you might try their product at some point.

I should also add, it would be impossible to say how many people are watching accurately. What they do is do a sample size, then they basically estimate from that sample size.