Nielsen ratings
Nielsen ratings are a critical measurement tool used to assess viewing patterns among a representative sample of television audiences in the United States and Canada. Established in 1923 by Arthur C. Nielsen, the company pioneered modern market research by initially tracking sales in retail before expanding into media measurement. With the advent of technology like audimeters and the "Nielsen black box," the company began to monitor television viewing habits in the 1950s, focusing on when televisions were on and which channels were being watched.
To capture demographic data, Nielsen implemented a system involving "Nielsen families," who maintained weekly viewing diaries, allowing for a deeper understanding of audience composition. This robust data collection became essential for advertisers, who relied on Nielsen's insights to make informed marketing decisions during a time of significant television growth. As a result, Nielsen ratings have become synonymous with television audience measurement, profoundly influencing marketing strategies and programming decisions across North America. The impact of these ratings continues to shape viewer engagement and advertising in the modern media landscape.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Nielsen ratings
Recording and evaluation of television viewing habits of households and individuals for the purpose of informing advertising marketing
The Nielsen rating system allowed 1950’s advertisers to target their marketing efforts in order to influence the most likely viewers of particular television programming, thereby increasing sales.
Nielsen Media Research provides an independent, third-party measurement of the viewing patterns of a random sample of individual and household viewers of broadcast and other television programming, in the United States and Canada, to inform marketing and programming decisions.
The original A. C. Nielsen Company was created in 1923 by a twenty-six-year-old engineer, Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr. He essentially founded the field of modern market research. Initially he created a market analysis system by which he physically visited stores in various geographic areas in order to track the sales of different brands—what would later become known as “market share” information. Later, he transferred this type of market analysis into the broadcasting arena and began to measure the tuning habits of radio listeners. Nielsen first used the acquired technology of “audimeters,” which could record exactly when individual radio sets were on and to what stations their dials were set. This technology made it possible to monitor the listening patterns of large numbers of households objectively and accurately.
In March of 1950, Nielsen purchased C. E. Hooper’s national radio and television ratings company and began the largest media-monitoring company in the United States. During the early 1950’s, Nielsen began monitoring television audiences to discover their watching patterns. Television viewing increased dramatically over the next few years and soon eclipsed radio listening. For television, a version of the audimeter, now referred to as the “Nielsen black box,” was used to measure the viewing of television households. Nielsen could measure when a television was on and what channel it was set to at that time. Presumably, someone in the household was watching the set while it was on, but measurements about the specific audience were unrecorded. The original ratings provided only estimates of television audience size and composition. These household ratings did not measure the viewing habits of individuals along demographic lines.
To determine individual viewing demographics, Nielsen added the reporting element of weekly television diaries filled out by company-chosen “Nielsen families,” who were picked to participate through a scientifically random sampling process. Based on a scientific principle of analyzing what people actually did, Nielsen developed random sample, national and local television audience measurements, called the National Television Index (NTI) and Nielsen Station Index (NSI), respectively.
Impact
During the 1950’s, television programs reached audiences enjoying unprecedented prosperity. Advertisers hoping to take advantage of this prosperity often sponsored entire programs. To maximize their marketing dollars, television advertisers needed reliable and projectable information about which television programs were being viewed and by whom. Without market research to guide them, companies had no way of knowing how best to spend their advertising dollars. In both Canada and the United States, consumer industries relied on the collected data of television viewing demographics provided by the Nielsen Media Company. During the 1950’s, the activities and innovations of the Nielsen Media Company set the stage for the research of subsequent decades, when Nielsen became the key provider of viewing information for marketing and programming decision making and greatly influenced a world commerce economy. “Nielsen” became synonymous with “television ratings.”
Bibliography
Beeville, Hugh Malcolm. Audience Ratings: Radio, Television, and Cable. Rev. ed. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1988. Chronicles the development of television ratings.
Webster, James G., and Lawrence W. Lichty. Ratings Analysis: Theory and Practice. 2d ed. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2000. Explores the methodology of ratings analysis and how ratings impact television and radio.