FOX dumps Overnight ratings
"This has to stop," FOX decides, in a push towards numbers for Live + 7 Day viewing.
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US network FOX is abandoning Overnight ratings numbers as part of a push to better reflect audience viewing habits.
It follows cable networks such as AMC and the NBCUniversal suite that have all moved away from Overnight ratings after FX first signalled a move in July 2014. FOX becomes the first non-cable network to follow suit.
FOX will no longer issue Overnight ratings to its staff or media, although the figures will still be available via Nielsen Media. It will make exceptions for premium Sport, Awards shows and Events.
In a memo to staff, FOX CEOs and chairmen Dana Walden and Gary Newman noted, “Every day, our creators, and their casts and crews, put their hearts and souls into making their shows as original and unforgettable as possible. And these creators deserve to work at a company that has a contemporary understanding of who their audience is and how their shows are watched.
“Looking ahead, we’re going to stop circulating the Nielsen Live + Same Day ratings, both internally and to press. We will not acknowledge them for any programming other than live events. We know that the daily external dialogue isn’t going to change right away, but internally, we can kick things off by shifting our own mindsets toward a more holistic measure.”
The US ratings landscape differs somewhat from Australia. Aside from its sheer size, its focus is on the Adult 18-49 demographic. It also reports Live Plus 3 Day, Live Plus 7 Day and Multiplatform data.
In Australia some networks differ in their interpretation of performance. Seven favours Total People, Nine is focussed on 25-54, while ABC talks metro+regional as a national figure. Most of them lead with “peaks” in their media releases, despite “averages” being the standard recognised by advertisers.
But all networks judge a show’s success based on its Timeshifted + Multiplatform performance (ie. Catch-Up & Streaming). OzTAM will soon be reporting Video plays to better reflect a changing landscape.
When he was briefly CEO at TEN James Warburton said, “In the US advertisers and media agencies are paying more attention to Consolidated ratings numbers and as an industry we feel we don’t do enough to monetise or report on those Consolidated numbers and we plan to tackle that issue here.”
“This has to stop. It’s time for us to “walk the walk” and change the conversation. The Live + Same Day rating does not reflect the way people are watching our series. It leaves out the vast majority of fans who choose to watch on DVRs, and virtually ignores those who stream our shows or watch on demand,” said FOX’s Walden and Newman.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
7 Responses
They do have a small argument for doing this, I agree, but there’s quite a bit against changing it.
Live ratings are pretty accurate indicators of a show’s success as is anyway (you aren’t going to see any shows saved purely through DVR viewership), and delayed ratings are really open to spin from FOX to create a better image.
Especially considering advertisers only pay for up to Live+3 ratings (not Live+7) anyway, so DVR ratings can be somewhat irrelevant in terms of cancel/renewal prospects (although there are a few exceptions like Quantico).
Fox has had a pretty horrible season in the ratings (obviously besides Empire) and it seems like this is a perfect time for them to ‘evolve’ their style of reporting their ratings. NBC might be next. Really it should only be cable networks to change their reporting style due to the different nature of viewership.
Not that any of…
Because the US ‘national’ ratings aren’t, exactly. As I understand it, the ongoing ‘national’ overnight / +3 / +7 figures are major markets only & mostly (all?) set/people meter based. They do have meters in local markets – which are usually ‘local, with networked inserts’, not ‘networked, with local inserts’ as is the case here – but those figures are accounted differently to the national figures.
The only true ‘national’ figures are done during the 4 ‘sweeps’ months, and aren’t live – they’re still largely done by diary and collated after the month recorded is finished.
(Oops, that should’ve been in reply to Andyh2 below…)
So really FOX will only be using overnights when it gives them positive media stories. The figures will still be the public measure of how many people are watching a show. Advertisers in the US don’t pay on +7s, only +3s.
It makes sense for Cable not to worry about overnights, the have multiple screenings of shows and get most of their revenue from premium subscriptions. FOX gets most of its revenue from ads and only a bit from basic cable fees.
In the end revenue matters for Network TV that means ad viewings. Downstream revenue goes to producers (which may or may not be co-owned with the network) , and the biggest is syndication.
I really don’t understand why Australia doesn’t have national ratings. How can a country of 300+ million people have national ratings but a country of 23 million can’t?
People living outside of capital cities are treated like 2nd class.
The population of Canberra, Wollongong and Newcastle together is about the same as Adelaide but they’re not considered important enough. So odd…
“People living outside of capital cities are treated like 2nd class.”
How are they being “treated like 2nd class”? Those markets have the same number of channels as the larger markets, even though they have a fraction of the population, and get measured in ratings surveys. The only difference is that the numbers from RegionalTAM are not as widely reported as OzTAM numbers. But the data is still collected for networks to sell their numbers to advertisers.
The fact we get any public ratings numbers at all is a far cry from the old days when I was growing up when the only ratings reporting was a few paragraphs in the paper once a week. Sometimes it wasn’t even that much.
It’s due to the way advertising is sold. When Mcdonald’s buys a “national” ad in the US – it screens on NBC and to their 300+ affils at the same time – reaching 99% of the population. So national ratings are measured to set ad rates. In Australia, when Maccas buys a “national” ad – it’s sold in just the 5 cap city markets – reaching just 65% of the population – hence why ratings are measured and reported for just those markets. If Mcdonalds really wants to advertise nationally, they would buy an ad with say Nine in the 5 cities, and then a second “regional” buy with NBN/WIN etc.
When the networks merge with affairs in the year ahead – I’d say we will see a shift to true national ratings.