Republished by the Miniland Business Review, published in the May edition in 2025
THE RATINGS GAME
By Bill Gobrick
Once upon a time, in a world far, far away from where we are today, the ratings for media outlets was done on a quarterly basis…and was measured for advertising purposes. These days, it’s become more for the race for the high school class president than actual performance data
PAPER DIARIES…AND ADVERTISING
The Nielsen Company and Arbitron, the once two major ratings agencies measured TV and radio content through diaries. On a quarterly basis, the agencies would poll the viewers and content in the months of February, May, July and November, the first ratings period in a traditional television season, and July was left to local news with viewership tend to be low. Ratings would be released the quarter following the ratings prior to the change of technology (meaning it would be closer to April to get a number of February books, and late June for May books, etc.)
In the 1980s, the technology moved to a so-called “people meter” where Nielsen would modify a TV to program their “people meter” box to electronically record and dial up to Nielsen’s computers. This also prevented false-positives of fuzzy memories, or loyal viewers claiming locality evne if the really didn’t consume the content. The people meters were for national content until the 1990s, when local stations. In early 2000s, the people meters were still being rolled out for the local media market. Boston stations actually dumped Nielsen when numbers for the local Boston TV stations wer radically lower than the traditional paper diaries. Boston being in a top ten market for it’s time, was 15 or so years apart when the initial roll out of the People Meters
THE 1990s – MORE FOCUS ON THE SWEEPS
The so called “sweeps’ period, and industry dubbed term for those quarterly peak ratings periods where TV shows would embellish their plots to get more viewers would accelerate during the advent of the People Meter, however the success of a TV show would still be dependent on a shows’ total viewership. By the 1990s, ratings were sent to Nielsen’s computers and managers could get their 11:00 news by the following morning giving the phrase to “overnights”. Certain managers treated overnights as crack. The gateway drug was the People Meter.
CONFLATING RATINGS FOR FINANCIAL SUCESS = POPULARITY CONTEST
Concurrently, Nielsen and Arbitron, two competing ratings agencies were rumored to merge, occurred in the late oughts, however Arbitron was developing a disruptive technology called the Portable People Meter or PPM. This technology used discrete audio sounds known as “water marks” on each channel or station to identify the meter what station the consumer was listening or later watching as Arbitron started to measure local TV again.
I used to listen to talk radio, and sometimes a TV expert would be on this show, and sometimes the host would ask this expert “how are the ratings?” This question wasn’t more of what I used to being asked when I worked in the industry, but it was more of is this show popular, so if it is, I should watch it? Ratings became more of a contagion than it was to measure advertising and a station’s (or show’s) performance.
Former Fox News Channel star, Megyn Kelly now on SiriusXM, talks obsessively about ratings, to interviews on Frontline to her own daily show, she goes on an obsession about the competition or pat her self on the back with her own performance when she used to work at her her former network. She even uses the trade slang to refer to lower performing programs on MSNBC, known as “ a slashie” where a show will rate too low Nielsen won’t measure it.
Which leads me to end with the rise of President Donald Trump who is very self aware of his obsession of overnights, in the recent exchange with Ukrainian Prime Minister Voldomar Zelensky, where after a public facing headed media exchange with the press, he said “it will bring great ratings”. ends of how the media treats currency of cumulative viewers verses overall demographic vs. all viewers is a form of a generic “page view” or “impressions” in the digital world. The traditional media, that is to me not “legacy” or “mainstream” but held to better standards against the unethical Silicon Valley was forced into unethical practices. The Fentynal of media was the feeding of “overnight” ratings
Gorbrick was a former General Manager and BMBC 4 in Miniland, he is now an adjunct professor of Mass Media Theories of UMINI Miniland.
Reprinted from the May issue of the Miniland Business Review.