TV Networks Hide Bad Ratings With Typos, Report Says (cnet.com) 115
A report Thursday in The Wall Street Journal details how networks are taking advantage of that fact to disguise airings that underperform with viewers. From a report: It's described as a common practice in the world of TV ratings, where programs with higher ratings can charge advertisers more to run commercials. When an episode performs poorly with viewers, the networks often intentionally misspell the show title in their report to Nielsen, according to the Journal. This fools the system into separating that airing out as a different show and keeping it from affecting the correctly-spelled show's average overall rating. The report says the practice was initially used sparingly -- for instance, when a broadcast would go up against a major sporting event.
I'm shocked, shocked! (Score:1)
Networks deliberately messing with facts to suit their agendas? Who'd have thunk it?
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The summary title is the title of the c:net article. Are you suggesting that slashdot editors should randomly reword things as they see fit rather than actually quoting the articles they link?
Network programmer discovers this weird trick... (Score:2, Funny)
Network programmer discovers this weird trick for hiding low rated shows. Advertisers hate him!
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TV Nets Hide Bad Ratings with Nielsen Myth (Score:3)
Nielsen hasn't figured this trick out by now? (Score:4, Interesting)
And they haven't employed technical solutions to correct for typos and collect the correct data?
This doesn't sound right.
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They're still using punch cards for data processing.
And people still give this antiquated shit value for some unknown reason.
Boggles my mind about as much as understanding how commercials still create revenue and justify airtime costs, as the time-shifted audience can't smash that fast-forward button fast enough.
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Old people like their habits (Score:2)
Somehow Home Shopping Network is worth 2 billion dollars even with Amazon in the arena. I imagine people throwing money at the screen when any commercial airs; somebody must be buying. I can't understand why.
Inertia and habits play a large part in it. The average age of a QVC shopper is 53 [wisc.edu] and 95% of their sales come from repeat shoppers. So we're mostly talking about older people who got discovered QVC before the internet was a thing continue to shop with them because its an old habit they are comfortable with. It seems unlikely that younger shoppers will come on board so the days of QVC are likely numbered but not for a few decades more.
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Just wait until the account holders realize the buttons their grandchildren press on the phone can lead to a $3,000 Chromebook appearing on their doorstep.
Seriously though, QVC/HSN are to broadcast as Amazon is to Netflix (or, uh, Amazon Prime Video). Only people who don't know how to search, or don't know what they want, will go that route.
Old people use ipads (Score:2)
QVC has actually done a lot to keep up technologically. They make a good deal of revenue from purchases made by people watching their streams via their apps on mobile, Roku, AppleTV, Facebook, and their website.
And yet the average age of their shoppers is still quite old and nearly all of their customer (95%) are repeat customers. So that implies that they are capturing the more technologically savvy of the customers they already had. Even my 98 year old grand mother has an iPad. It's easy enough to advertise an app to facilitate purchases so QVC realizing a lot of revenue though app purchases doesn't actually surprise me much.. They're just making it easier for their existing customer to do business with the
Re:Nielsen hasn't figured this trick out by now? (Score:5, Informative)
That said, they are pushing back and this year ad buy revenue has been flat for most networks compared to last year (usually goes up a bit each year). They are aware that the market is shrinking.
This is also why you are seeing more and more carriage disputes between cable/sat providers and the owners of the local affiliates (or the networks themselves if they are O&O stations). Carriage fees are a massive part of their revenue now, and they are using that as a bit of a buffer against falling viewership numbers. The affiliate owners keep pushing to increase the fees each contract.
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They no longer have any idea what so ever about what people are viewing, right now a great big fat fucking lie is being pushed. Only a select audience of empathic TV viewers get to play the game and then the entire populations viewing habits are based on this group. Now that worked reasonable well prior to the internet but since the internet, there are growing numbers of people who do not watch free to air or cable and yet that same select sample is still meant to represent the entire population, a categori
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Only a select audience of empathic TV viewers get to play the game and then the entire populations viewing habits are based on this group.
I was sent the Nielsen notebook and asked to record our household's viewing habits. I gave them two weeks of data, and they never contacted us again. Why? Because we don't watch a ton of TV. And what we do watch is not the profitable stuff.
I sort-of figured that dumping us would happen, but at the same time, it really reinforced how much of a scam the entire TV market is. If you're going to base your decisions on carefully curated data, you might as well just not use data at all. Just make it all u
Re: Nielsen hasn't figured this trick out by now? (Score:2)
Seriously. Don't they charge a lot for their services? Wouldn't advertisers be demanding accurate info or find another way to get it? Or are these industries totally ossified with denial?
Re: Nielsen hasn't figured this trick out by now? (Score:4, Funny)
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Denial and bad data presented as true maintains the status quo. A lot of the agencies that place ads on behalf of their clients would suddenly have some tough questions to answer from those clients if the bad data was exposed so like in many industries perception is king and makes reality - and it's in everyone's best interests to present a shiny 'reality' instead of drilling down and telling the true story.
And having dealt with other industries where everyone thinks the tech is cutting edge but behind the
Re:Nielsen hasn't figured this trick out by now? (Score:4)
Yeah doesn't sound like an incredibly hard problem to solve. 1) Don't key off the damn show name. An int(11) series_id combined with a "series not found, please check for spelling errors" return when the network tries to submit a rating seems like something even a CS grad could make happen. 2) Adjust their algorithm to account for competing shows.
Isn't it a larger problem that the networks are submitting their own ratings? Who the hell thought this was a good idea? "No, trust us, that show did GREAT. It was HUGE." WTF.
Last random thought... This whole thing smells like a phone book company in an Internet world...
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Isn't it a larger problem that the networks are submitting their own ratings?
They're submitting their schedule, not the ratings.
Something has to tell Nielsen what was actually on NBC at 6:30 so it can be matched up with what the box reported to Nielsen.
Re: Nielsen hasn't figured this trick out by now? (Score:2)
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They're submitting their schedule, not the ratings.
Something has to tell Nielsen what was actually on NBC at 6:30 so it can be matched up with what the box reported to Nielsen.
Then again: Why? Why separately? That information should be taken from any TV Guide as a forecast at least, and then only corrected for overruns or the occasional breaking news. That should be done independently by Nielsen, if having accurate numbers is in their own interest. Have a show reported that does not show up in the TV Guide? Should raise a flag for manual error checking.
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That information should be taken from any TV Guide
TV Guide makes errors too. Also, networks regularly change their schedule compared to what TV guide published.
Finally, network affiliates don't have to show what the network is going to show. Every affiliate would have to submit a separate schedule anyway.
That should be done independently by Nielsen
That would require a very large increase in the number of people employed by Nielsen. The numbers they produce are "good enough" as far as the industry is concerned, so there's little reason for Nielsen to hire all the people required to enter the data
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Re:Nielsen hasn't figured this trick out by now? (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine if Slashdot was like that, producing duplicate story entries. We'd think terribly of them and defect.
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Correction, I believe it's supposed to be "Imagine if Slashdot were like that..."
I work with Nielsen data (Score:3)
While they don't actually use punch cards, a lot of the data seems like it's from that era - fixed width, all caps, space padded... feels very mainframe-y.
That said, Nielsen also has networks report TV programs with unique numeric "program codes", so it's not like they (or other people using their data, like me) rely on the program strings to group by program.
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What incentive do they have?
This is fraud, plain and simple.
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Is it fraud if your less-popular series with ten half-hour episodes and a rating of 73 airs 2 hours before U.S. election footage, and your more-popular prime-time series with 5 one-hour episodes airs one during the U.S. election and gets a rating of 68??
Hey, look, I can sell $LESS_VALUABLE show on fake higher ratings than $MORE_VALUABLE show because an outlier condition has damaged their ratings. They have one big dip on one episode out of four years, but their ratings this year tanked and so next year t
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Is the count of eyeballs correct, or not?
It does matter if something else gets those eyeballs, be it a sporting event, an election, an empty podium...
Its fraud against the advertisers, and Nielsen is a co-conspirator.
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The count of eyeballs is not correct because it suggests that the count is different for the other airings of the show.
You do realize that not removing this distorted data in any professional capacity will get bad things on your doorstep, right? For example: if you have a deviation from the median greater than 1.5x the inter-quartile distance and you keep it in your data to show safety and efficacy of a drug, you are committing fraud and the FDA will fine you and pull your drug from the market when it t
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You do realize that not removing this distorted data in any professional capacity will get bad things on your doorstep, right?
I only realize that a process which only cuts outliers from one end, is bullshit.
Clearly you do not, even though you did all that thinking to write all those words, you didnt even consider it. This is because you are a complete fucking idiot.
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I told you, no data, no conjecture. If I wanted to make shit up, I would say there must be outliers on one end, and that extra advertisement and season finales must draw more eyes than usual, and try to spin a narrative on wholly-imagined numbers.
Of course, if I tried that, I'd have to point out that the deviations are based on the same audience affinities, and would only represent normal variations in existing viewership; whereas deviations from other events draw normal viewership away. That suggests t
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When you open with bullshit like dishonesty or fallacies, nobody cares what else you have to say unless its an act of contrition. Piling on more bullshit just proves that we are right to no longer give a fuck what you think.
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Yes, it's fraud.
Ask yourself; are they also excluding positive outliers?
Pharma companies don't measure how many people who take their drug get healthy, they measure how many people get healthy because they take their drug. That's why they have to eliminate external factors from their data.
Nielsen ratings measure how many viewers shows have on average. Nothing is stopping the TV channels from not providing any data to Nielsen, providing mode averages, putting in the extra work to explain the outliers and off
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How would you get positive outliers? Are there positive outliers?
We can conjecture about things all day; the facts here, however, are that data confounded by outside variables to the point of becoming a negative outlier is removed from the system. They may not be statisticians over there, and their reasoning might be incorrect; the action taken is the correct action. I don't have any facts about any other actions taken. Bringen sie mier data.
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There are certainly positive outliers. For example season finales or particularly well-advertised episodes.
Anyway, next time some episodes airs during the superbowl, advertisers can trust the predicted number of viewers being correct, thanks to the excellent practice of excluding negative outliers.
Lies, damn lies and statistics.
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Season finales and well-advertised episodes would stand out, yeah. I'm not sure by how much. It might not be enough to make the outlier criteria. This is, again, why robust data analysis is better than a single number, even though we have statistical methods for improving that single number's meaningfulness.
Anyway, next time some episodes airs during the superbowl, advertisers can trust the predicted number of viewers being correct
The problem is you have six numbers: 890, 870, 845, 865, 520. The average here is 798. That last number is during the Super Bowl.
So the number you're looking for "during the superbowl" is 520. Th
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Oh damn! Now, I am feeling bad for the ad companies. They're getting ripped off.
Booo-hooooo
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It's probably considered a feature.
Absent better data tools which perform statistical analysis based on temporal locality, letting an episode of a TV show average its ratings out with ratings during major events like sports or 9/11 would distort the data with outliers. In statistics, we actually identify anything more than 1.5 times further away from the median than the first and third quartiles and discard it before performing any computations.
Think about it. You air a 13-episode season of a show. A
Re: Nielsen hasn't figured this trick out by now? (Score:1)
Accurate and reasonable ratings can be derived by properly modeling and accounting for these known issues like sporting events or national disasters in news.
Self-medicating with "typos" is not the right way to do it and it does look like defrauding the advertisers.
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If a show sucks, it still sucks (Score:2)
Why do we care? (Score:5, Insightful)
With the advent of streaming Nielson ratings are going to mean next to nothing anyway. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon will already know what shows/episodes/movies are popular just by hit counts.
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With the advent of streaming Nielson ratings are going to mean next to nothing anyway. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon will already know what shows/episodes/movies are popular just by hit counts.
I'd say it already means next to nothing. Ask the average Millennial how Nielson ratings affect their entertainment selections. I doubt they even know what a Nielson rating is, which highlights how irrelevant it has become. The only ones not accepting that fact are the ones still profiting from it.
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Nielson rates are for calculating ad costs and determining if a show should be cancelled or not. Generations before millennials never directly cared about Nielson ratings either, they aren't meant for the consumers.
Regarding show popularity and viewership, usage statistics should be able to be pulled from any cable box, and would likely be more accurate. Online streaming can really dial in the accuracy, since a lot of content is consumed on personal devices that also identify the specific end-user (age, gender, etc.). Since we're here discussing how something as simple as a spelling error can manipulate the shit out of ratings, perhaps manipulation is a key feature of Nielson that prevents us from trying to find a m
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Nielson ratings were garbage in the early days because they were based on diaries filled out by hand by selected viewers. People who might be embarrassed to admit they watched trash television or blue movies, or fell asleep, or whatever. Chances are there was a lot of lying going on during the data collection phase.
I believe later they moved to electronic collection, but that failed to account for people who left the TV on, or watched something on tape (or later DVD... I don't know if they fixed this by t
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i agree with you on principle, but really this is just fraction of a peanut compared to the massive organized fraud known as Hollywood accounting (where massive hit blockbuster movies that rake in huge money and spawn countless sequels, are somehow reported as losing money).
AFAIK nobody ever got arrested or indicted for Hollywood accounting, it's all been just civil lawsuits and secret settlements.
I know there are many good liberal people in the general population, but the liberals who happen to hold power
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political ideology and morality are orthogonal measures of a person.
I know many good republicans, many bad ones too.
Same for Dems, and even the handful of Marxists* I know.
As to the style of accounting... total sleazeball stuff right there.
*using that very loosely so I can actually count a handful...
Things make sense now (Score:2)
I remember a couple episodes of "Third Rook from the Son" that were really quite terrible.
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Chess-hater!
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I remember a couple episodes of "Third Rook from the Son" that were really quite terrible.
Just a couple? That was a horrid show, a weekly dose of "Howard the Duck". Complete with a stupid concept, aliens, uninteresting story lines, humorless jokes, horrible acting and an unremarkable cast. I don't think there is even ONE episode I'd choose to watch more than once...
I can fix this with my cutting edge technology! (Score:2)
Ok, may sound crazy, might be a bit over-the-top...but...
How about using a drop down box on the fucking submit form?
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A fax machine for punch cards? How does that work?
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It's easy if you've been sent an all-black fax by Scientology haters (this is Hollywood after all)... just feed that back into the machine behind the punchcard to make the holes stand out.
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In my experience, typically business-to-business data like this is sent in bulk. The major networks probably have hundreds of current shows and several thousands of vintage shows, let alone gazillion potential movie titles and one-off specials. Nobody will want to hand key each one.
An automated process is probably set up to send over something like a CSV or XML data file via FTP or similar for each reporting period.
They could have a show registration step of som
easy idea to solve the fraud. (Score:5, Interesting)
Shows are broadcast on a predetermined schedule.
A show gets a zero until something is submitted.
that will get the spelling right.
Anyways it is pretty dumb that Nelson has not been able to vet this out.
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Why should they care? They get paid either way. Head down, eyes forward, don't make waves. That's what keeps the peace and the cash flowing.
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Yep. They don't really collect ratings and publish them. As I posted above, they ignore anyone that they don't feel is the right demographic engaging with the right products in the right way. It's not data collection at all - it's a curation of people who will produce the data they need to support their business model and keep their customers happy.
No reason at all to point out that their customers are gaming the system - if that makes them happy, great!
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I'd be willing to bet that they were the ones who told the networks (AKA their clients) about that little exploit.
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Who says they want to vet it out? If the show gets higher ratings, people will pay more for advertising during the show. This helps both the TV networks and Nielsen.
FRAUD (Score:1)
This is FRAUD. Simple as that. Just another example of criminal culture run amok in corporate America, but no one goes to jail. There is no respect for the law in the USA left.
Fraud (Score:5, Informative)
Many times, the network advertising rates are based upon rating shares. A deliberate deception, which raises the apparent share, and therefore ad rates, is fraud - plain and simple. The advertisers should be up in arms about this.
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Buyer beware..
I'm sure Nelson will provide the data directly to an advertiser who wants to get the information from them. Not sure if they charge for it though.
The Summary makes it clear (Score:2)
Typos? (Score:1)
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I prefer "Prancing with the Stars", and "Breaking Bar" myself... But yeah "Better call Paul" is pretty awesome.
Form that contains show names (Score:2)
Don't have the networks type in the show's name. Instead, have them fill out a form that has the show names already entered on it.
Instead of someone from ABC typing "Wrld News Tonite" followed by audience numbers, the ABC person should bring up a web page that has the show names on it. Next to "World News Tonite", the person would type the number for that show.
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PHB Response (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a PHB non-response response if I've ever seen one. It says nothing concrete and doesn't explain the cause. It sounds like it's from a canned excuse template. "Microsoft Alibi for Azure"? And what is a "touch point"? That's either a new-fangled biz buzzword, or a way to get sued for harassment.
How about a more honest statement: "We got cost-cutting-happy and slacked on data inspection. We apologize and will shape up and spend more on data validation like we should have from the start."
You'll almost never hear that from a corporation. Would that kind of response really hit their stock harder than the first? I would think honesty would be more effective with stock-holders/purchasers. But egos get in the way and instead they produce flavorless fluff responses.
To be fair, if they admit fault, lawsuits would be easier because the judge/jury has a direct written confession. Without it, they can confuse the court, for example, by claiming the Flux Capacitor, built by a far-off vendor, was at fault.
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Nielsen allows stations to "retitle" programs if there is something about the program beyond the station's control that affects viewership. As an example, a sporting event runs long, and the newscast runs an hour and a half late, and viewership drops substantially. That would impact the average ratings of the newscast in its normal time slot when every other station in the market is running its news at the normal time, so the station is right to exclude that aberration from the running average. Think of it
I worked at Nielsen (Score:5, Interesting)
After working a few years at Nielsen (in data-heavy development roles), this sort of issue is what prompted me to leave. Trying to convince them that ensuring data integrity is worthwhile was an uphill battle. Sure, they have lots of valuable data... but it's all dirty as heck. Now they think they can just throw some machine learning on top of it to fix everything right as rain. We can all guess how well that will go!
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Now they think they can just throw some machine learning on top of it to fix everything right as rain. We can all guess how well that will go!
Actually, fixing misspellings that are close to one valid title and far from any others is something machine learning is pretty good at.
If only it applied to other things (Score:2)
Ratings mean shit (Score:3)
The networks will air whatever the people that pay them air... I can't count how many times I have seen what looked like a promising show cancelled before a dozen episodes, or after just one intriguing season, on an alleged claim of "poor ratings" when a cursory look at the actual ratings shows that the show had actually performed quite well.