This is why I've always taken a network's ratings
claims with a huge grain of salt: According to this AP
article, Super Bowl XL was seen in 45.85 million homes, second only to the 1983 finale of M*A*S*H in the
history of TV. However, the rating itself, 41.6, was only up slightly from last year's game (probably because a rating
point represents more homes than it did last year or in 1983). Also the share, which measures the percentage of TVs in
use, remained the same at 62.Got all that? But wait, there's more...
141.4 million people watched the game at any single point, which was second only to last year's game in the history
of TV. So, even though the rating was higher than last year's game, the number of people watching at any particular
point was lower. However, the average number of people watching throughout was higher than last year's game
(90.7 million people to 86.1 million), the highest number since Super Bowl XXX in 1996.
So, class, in
conclusion: more homes watched the game than any other program in history except one, but less people watched at any
one point than even last year's game. Finally, more people watched the game on average than last year's game, but still
less than the number from 10 years ago.
Wow, that's some fine statistical hoop-jumping on the part of the
folks at Nielsen. I mean, I have an engineering degree and I can't keep track of all this. My guess is the number of
people watching in bars and at parties skewed these numbers a bit, but really I can't explain it more than that. If you
have any idea how the numbers came out like this, let me know in the comments.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-07-2006 @ 3:08PM
Tucker said...
Ratings are complete BS. It's like the Family Guy episode where the FCC guys are sitting at the boardroom table: "Gentlemen, we received 20 calls about the incident. As you know, one call equals a million people. Therefor TWENTY MILLION PEOPLE were offended."
Show me all the delta-omega-margin-of-error crap you want, there is NO WAY to accurately extrapolate data for an entire nation based on a few crummy set-top boxes that are placed in places the marketing people want. It's all a smoke-and-mirrors game.
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2-07-2006 @ 4:06PM
Anthony said...
I don't have an engineering degree, but I have no trouble figuring it out. Guess my mathematics education in Asia did pay off :)
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