TV "ratings"

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Soldato
Joined
22 Mar 2008
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London
Someone explain to me why when TV ratings are given American shows they seem far lower than they should be.

For instance, Top Gear in UK manages to pull it 6-7million viewers, in a country of 66mil in 26mil households.

Why is it then considered a "good" rating in USA on a major network is to get about 10million (24 peaked at just under 14mil, America's Got Talent at 12.5mil and CSI:NY at just under 15mil)

Surely with a population of 300+mil in about 120mil households one would expect a top rated program to get over 25mil viewers?

Or am I missing something?
 
More channels and many programmes are shown on cable which just over 50% of the population have. Therefore, if it's cable only then half the number of households to 60mil, and thus a good programme would get 12.5mil, based on your figures. Sounds like they're doing well to me.
 
Aren't the ratings in the US acquired using the Neilsen system (only uses certain familes) or is that something different?
 
The average household has access to a larger selection of channels and thus viewer share is diluted. In addition the networks show a LOT more repeats so people are aware that they can catch something again easily at another time rather than making the effort to watch it when it's first run.
 
Ahleckz said:
More channels and many programmes are shown on cable which just over 50% of the population have. Therefore, if it's cable only then half the number of households to 60mil, and thus a good programme would get 12.5mil, based on your figures. Sounds like they're doing well to me.
Click to expand...

And we have Sky with many channels.
The point was that ABC, CBC, Fox and NBC are available to everyone, and 24 is a Fox program, America's Got Talent is an NBC program and CSI:NY is a CBS program.
On top of this you can add USA and 10 hours a week of The CW.

That just about covers all the major networks, which is about equal to us at BBC, ITV, C4, C5, Sky1
 
I'm pretty sure the reason is the greater racial and cutural diversity in America.
 
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rypt said:
And we have Sky with many channels.
The point was that ABC, CBC, Fox and NBC are available to everyone, and 24 is a Fox program, America's Got Talent is an NBC program and CSI:NY is a CBS program.
On top of this you can add USA and 10 hours a week of The CW.

That just about covers all the major networks, which is about equal to us at BBC, ITV, C4, C5, Sky1
Click to expand...

Fair enough, my mistake - I don't know much about serials on American telly.

I've been studying the effect that the media has on American politics all week, and one major point is the large number of channels so just adapted that argument for this. Pretty poor of me, I should know better than just change one scenario to another and hope it fits!
 
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