How TV Ratings Work

slightly fictionalized version of our life, our work life. We made a sitcom. Yeah we did. It's pretty cool and a lot of people loved it, and a lot of people are like, what in the world did you do it that way for? So that a lot it's like basically ten and ten. Oh, yeah, you're referring to the tony people who've seen that show. Yeah, actually we'll get to that at all. But we um, we know a little bit about how TV ratings work because of that, and uh, in some ways I believe we're a victim

of the antiquated system that is the Nielsen TV ratings. Now, dude, it's it's it's antiquated, it's changing. I do not disagree with the antiquated part. What I do disagree with is that had it been up to date, I think it would have had zero impact on our success. I don't know, man, I will say this to the people out there, what um. What the network did was they looked only at one number, which is the amount of people that sat down in front of their television set on a Saturday night live

at ten pm to watch our show. They did not count things that we'll talk about, like online streaming or DVR um or anything like that, which is what makes it antiquated. Because it's it's changing. Man. People aren't watching TV like they used to. But they're basing a lot of these uh decisions on a system that was designed in the nineteen fifties. So let's go back, man. It goes back even further than that, back in three the A. C. Nielsen Company started. At the time, people who were broadcasting

radio wanted to know what people were listening to. So there are a lot of companies that would telephone up family at random and say, say, fella, what are you listening to right now? On the old Victor Rola, the Amazing adventure A. And uh, he'd say, hey, thanks a lot, bub talk to you later, and they'd hang up a nickel for your trouble, they wish, because we're talking depression at this time. Um well not later on, they wished the head a nickel. Here's a chicken for your pot.

That's a Hoover reference. Man, you don't get those two often try to bust him out. So the Nielsen Company said, that's all finding good. That's great that you guys are figuring out what people are listening to, but we have

something even better because we are a technological powerhouse. And what they did was they randomly picked some families around America and said, say, can we put this cool recording device in your home near your radio and it will record what you're listening to at any given time, and then we'll send technicians out to pick it up from time to time to get the information off of it, and then bring it back so we can keep recording it. And family said sure, and the Nielsen Company's domination of

broadcast ratings was sealed. After that point, everybody from every competitor they had was just peanuts compared to the Nielsen Company, so much so that when you hear TV ratings, it's synonymous with Nielsen ratings, very much like Kleenex and UH facial tissue are one and the same same thing, thanks

to Nielsen's technological powerhouse. The irony of it, though, is once they started installing those boxes in the twenties or thirties, and then they moved on to television sets, the innovation, I mean they innovated somewhat fundamentally principally, it remained the same until a year or two ago. Yeah, and they're not, Um, we'll get into all the hardware of the the hardware side of how it works. But what they did in n with send actual little diaries that you would fill

out and pencil and send back. And they still do that today in two thousand fourteen, even though in two thousand six they said they were going to stop. They still send those little diaries. And you get a little diary in the mail with five one dollar bills really in the envelope for your troubles, and they look like the modern nickel, Yeah exactly. And they rely on lazy, dishonest people to fill out this card and mail it back and then go spend that five dollars on a

on a grande a latte. It would have gotten a lot more. Oh man, you could have bought a car. But but that is the diary version. What UM and and the networks and advertisers have never liked the diary version. They still don't know. But it's what's called sweep sweek, which is hard to say. That's right, and we'll get it sweeps in a second. But um what they mainly like to rely on are two different electronic hardware methods UM the set meters as in TV set and people meters.

And right now they have by they plan to have more than sixty TV set meters. And this is just for the US and Canada, by the way, because everyone else's TV is weird. Yeah, simon, do you ever watched TV in different countries when you're traveling and stuff? Yes, and it is so much fun. It is fun. But after a while you're like, I really miss American TV. Yeah, but I mean, if you're traveling abroad, you shouldn't be watching a whole lot of TV. Exact, it's like late

night in the hotel. It's one of but it's one of the great plus is as you're just like, I don't feel like watching this, will go out and see the site instead. Yeah. I think I was in Belgium watching TV with my buddy Brett years and years ago, and uh that was translated in English and subtitles and one of the characters said something and I guess I don't know if it was Flemish, and the other guy just looked and said I and it said me too.

So we still say that today when we're responding me to do each other, we'll go I all those years later. So anyway, Um, the set, yeah, I said there was in thirty one uh markets, TV markets, and then there are about thirty five thousand, I believe. Now people meeters in those homes, I'm sorry, in about twenty homes, and those people meeters are more specific because you can have

three people meeters in one house. We want to see what little Susie's watching, We want to see what her brother Randy's watching, and they won't see what her dad watches after everyone's gone to bed. Yeah, so each one of them will have their own little people meter that they'll turn on. And I always thought that these things were connected to your television like your cable box and it just kind of read the information, but they're actually

listening devices. Isn't that weird? Totally blew my mind. So basically, the podcast the way that the way that Nielsen figures out what TV show you're talking to is because they have a device that's connected to the Internet that um

is eaves dropping on your TV. And they just in two thousand and six finally got to the point where they perfected this technology, and they have codes that broadcasters, the networks and the local affiliates have to put in to their audio stream, the audio video stream that the audio stream is it just audio, yeah, but they're trying to come up with the video version. So basically, there's a a sound, there's a frequency that you can't hear.

I don't even think your dog can hear it, but it comes through your TV and your Nielsen box can hear it. And it's a it's basically an audio fingerprint for a show. And when the Nielsen box here's that audio, it can be like, oh, well, they're watching good Times right now, that's funny. I was just thinking that Good Times, yeah, and then I was like, no, let should say Three's Company instead. It depends, and then he said good Times.

Although if you watch good Times long enough, there's an episode of Three's Company coming on eventually on that channel. That's I think good Times and maybe my favorite all time theme song. That's a good one. Oh man, it's so good, it's ridiculous. Did I tell you Henry Mancini did the the What's Happening? Theme song? Yes? What episode is that? In just a few ago it was number

stations because the sound that the shortwave thing. So uh, That's how Nielsen has been figuring out what people are watching, which is mind blowing. It's also if it's a little backwards, yeah, it may be emblematic of a larger systematic resistance towards technological improvement. Yeah. Or if it seems a little small as far as the sample pool goes, Umi, it is. But what they do is they extrapolate that number, just like polsters do, and they say, well, this these are

average markets, these are average families. Um so if these eventually sixty TV sets are watching this, we can pull that out and and do some sort of They probably do it on a chalkboard in a room. There's this one guy who has the piece of chalk and the extrapolate sets out and says, well, this is what America is watching, which always has bugged me, especially when you have a TV show that gets canceled. It is because it all comes down to just how representative is your sample.

So there's six TV sets there, sixty by two thoften right now in two thous in fourteen may have two thousand fourteen. There are a hundred and sixteen point three million TV set from the US. So this is a very small sample size. But if the guy with the chalk um Bert can can come up with a very good representative portion of the US, Like there's this many UM divorced Hispanic families, there's this many UM gay Asian households.

There's like this many you know, Mitt Romney voters, and like they take all these guys and put them together and it's a clear cross section of America. That's America, baby. You should be able to extrapolate pretty pretty well from that. That's true. It just all depends on how good their statisticians are, that's right. And they do audits over the years and quality checks of course, and compare ratings from

different samples. So it's not like they just said, yeah, I saw we're doing it, although they sort of do that, but they do they do quality checks of course. Yeah. One of the problems is like there's been so few challenges from outside competition that Nielsen can do whatever it wants, and it's so powerful that it literally has the entire

television industry at its feet. It decides what rating a TV show gets, and ultimately, the whole point to all of this stuff, the TV ratings in general, is so that networks and their local affiliates can set advertising rates for advertisers. There's seventy eight billion dollars at stake. That's the advertising spent in a year on television, and it

all comes down to what rating. Nielsen, with the representative sample and their audio eavesdropping boxes and their five dollar bills in a paper diary, decide that your TV show got. That's right. That's the dirty little secret is that they don't care how many people are watching that TV show.

They care about how many people are watching the commercials. Yeah, that's really what they're looking at, and more specifically, what demographic, which is why I don't think we mentioned why the people meters are so valuable, because they want to get that specific demo so they can show advertisers eighteen to forty nine year olds, they spend a ton of money and they're watching uh, they're watching Community, but no one else is, so will cancel Community, which is kind of crazy,

as we'll see in a little a little while. Yeah, but um, just quickly let me go over. I think most people know this. But if you've got a half hour TV show and um, you're gonna have twenty two minutes of UH TV show, then you're gonna have eight minutes of commercial. Six of those are national ads sold by the network, and then your local affiliate. That's where you're gonna get your awesome commercials. The Wolf two minutes

worth or crazy Eddie. I remember it was big up in the Northeast and then so this is two thousand and six. I couldn't find one recently, but back in two thousand and six, you if you're buying a commercial slot from a local affiliate, you're gonna pay about dollars to two thousand dollars depending on This is during the daytime. This isn't like three am, depending on what show. So like back when Oprah was on, you could get a

thirty second spot for ninety bucks you could. Yeah, you could also pay up to two thousand dollars for it, and then apparently you're going to double that for um a national ad for a thirty second spot during the day, which isn't just not outlandish. Well that's how crazy Eddie. I mean, yeah, or the wolf Man. They don't have a ton of money. Although I don't know, the wolf Man wore a lot of jewelry. For those of you who don't know who the Wolfman is, we understand because

you probably didn't live in Atlanta. Yeah, I bet it was Southeast I bet it was on like WTVS and stuff. All you have to do is go type in Wolfman, Donna, gallery furniture into the YouTube's and it will show you some classic gallery furniture ads. Or just type in, hey, ask for the Wolfman. No, ask for Donna. I don't remember that part. What you don't remember Donna, his daughter with the hair. The whole premise of the ad, wanted you to come see him, and she'd say, Hey, ask

for the Wolfman. She'd go no, ask for Donna. She'd always get his goat. All right, So let's take a break here and then we'll talk about you mentioned Sweeps Week and we'll talk about that right after this. Yeah, we will, all right, sweeps Everyone's heard it. Um it is a bit. Yeah, everyone hears about you know this is sweeps Weeks. That's when well, well we'll tell you what it is. This is the fact that the podcast to me what sweets Week? Yeah, where it came from

and why it exists. Well, in when they started sending out those TV diaries and uh, they made a geographic sweep starting in the northeast, across the country from east to west, and they collected the little booklets and those were our first reportings of TV writings. So before they had they had the eaves offing boxes that they were using. But it was basically like, um, this this These are I think maybe up the twenty thousand households at one

point in the major markets. There's the great thing about the paper diaries is they could go into local markets, smaller markets and find out not just what you know, the people in New York or l A or Chicago were watching, but what the people in you know, Santa Fe were watching too, or you know, Fort Lauderdale. Those are saying, how does it play in Santa Fe? Sheboygan

or something probably or Walla, Walla, I can't remember. It may have been a movie thing too, but that there's an industry saying, how does it play in the city. It's got a rhyme because that's what matters, you know. Of course New York, in l A and the major markets are going to consume. Uh. They want to know what your average household wants to see, right, And this is this is the first time that anyone had ever taken a really comprehensive snapshot of what America was watching

in a given week. And so they said, hey, this worked really well. We're gonna start doing this every year. We're gonna have what's now called a sweep Sweek and it's going to be on this week. And so the TV executive said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, sweep Sweek, this is what we're gonna start setting our advertising rates against. And it's gonna be this week, and I'm going to do the craziest stuff I can think of to get ratings as as big and wide as

I possibly can grab on that week. And that is where sweep Sweek came from. And we have seen some pretty interesting things as a result of sweeps week. Yeah, there's um a great tradition of stunt casting during sweeps week. Justin Bieber will show up on c S. I. I didn't see that one to do, and I don't watch that show, and if I did, I would have punched my TV if he showed up on it. Um, if you're gonna shoot JR, You're gonna do it during sweep sweek.

Oh yeah. The late night talk shows are gonna load up their their biggest A list guest during sweeps week. E R did a live show. Yes, I've actually watched that one, and I wasn't an e R fan. I just wanted to see if they could pull it off. Right. It's pretty cool. Ellen used to have a sitcom based on her life and she came out on that show

during sweep Sweell. Yeah, that's right. And very famously, there was a not one, not two, but thrice part Happy Days where Fonzie jumps the shark on water skis that sweep that happened during sweep sweek. Wow, that's a sweeps failure. Well, I'll know if people watched it. Yeah. I don't guess you can call it a failure because that's probably as iconic. Yeah, it's part of the lexicon. Now do you remember an

Arrested development where Henry Winkler jumps over Shark Classic. Uh, these days, sweep Sweek is actually sixteen weeks because they

have I don't know if but narrowed it down. They broadened it out to four four week periods in November of February, May and July, and they still old trot out uh special things for sweeps but it's not it definitely doesn't have the teeth that it used to because the way that people consume media these days, which we're gonna you know, start getting into, so not it doesn't

have the teeth that it used to. And and as a result, um, a lot of networks have kind of stopped, like you said, doing the stunt casting and that kind of stuff. But it's still as a um um, it's still basically holding broadcast TV hostage because that is still what advertisers want to see, Well, what are your ratings during sweeps Week? And that's what they set their ad

rates against. So the fact that there are these four month long sweeps weeks um means that the broadcasters have to follow the normal fall the summer broadcast model with reruns in between. Yeah, and this is for for NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, like the major broadcast networks non cable networks, which is a completely dying beast. Yeah, because they rely exclusively on advertising, and cable has been eating their lunch because advertising has been going down. It looks like it's already peaked. It's

still seventy eight million dollars billion billion. Yes, you're right, but cable takes a huge substantial portion of that in advertising. But then even when advertising rates go down, cable still survives because cable makes money off of subscriber fees and transmission fees to Yeah, exactly, which is why a cable has a big leg up. And also they can um they don't have a traditional television season. They can release stuff all year long and you can binge watch it. Yeah,

which is happening. That's that's the new model. So, like we said, for many years, um Nielsen was just kind of as this one Wired article, the Nielsen family is

dead put it. It was in a torpor. And the first thing that really per um, the first thing that really roused um Nielsen was DVRs Because when DVRs came along, the advertising industry was like, oh god, people can fast forward through ads now like they've always dreamed of doing exactly now they can, And it was the basically the television apocalypse, and that didn't pan out because advertisers figured out that, yeah, people can ever we can pass forward

two ads. But there's ways to still get your message across at sixteen time speed. You can do things called pop busters where you use the actors or the look or the set of the TV show that you're advertising within to make them think like the show just came back on and you caught them. Because it's really an ad um there's all sorts of stuff you can do,

so it hasn't been an advertising apocalypse. And as a result, because DVRs are clearly clearly here to stay and have been since you know, the early two thousands, um Nielsen has had to kind of finally be like, Okay, we need to innovate a little bit and figure out how to include DVR because not everybody's sitting down at eight o'clock on a Monday night and watching Murder. She wrote, nobody is man. I watched a couple of episodes the other night. I love that show. I've never seen one episode.

What I know, man, it is good? Is it's good? Another thing too? Uh? Just the backtrack is I've noticed lately is UM, you're on demand watching, which a lot of cable companies. I'm a Comcast person by because I'm forced to be. UM. A lot of the the on demand shows now within the first like a couple of weeks that they're available, you can't fast forward through. Oh yeah, like you hit the fast forward button and a little null sign comes up and says, sorry, you're gonna have

to sit through this. The DVR, I guess the fact that the DVR is connected to the internet, yeah, and is because it's getting show information that the actual show is being recorded on your physical hard drive. I'm sure there's cloud DVR recorders or whatever, but for the most part, there's a hard drive that's recording shows onto your DVR. And then the other capability is that it is connected to the Internet, which is where it gets show information

and all that stuff to present to you. But the Internet, as you may have figured out by now, is a two way streak. Not only can information be downloaded to your home, it can be uploaded and that includes your preferences. How what shows you watch, how often you watch them when you watch them, And so all of a sudden, the DVR companies are like, hey, Nielsen's giving you guys, like eight pm on NBC ratings. We've got all of these other ratings that they're not taking into account that

you can get from us. Not only that, but they can actually tell when you're pausing your TV because the infamous nip slip hate even saying those words, uh, and the two thousand four Super Bowl with Janet Jackson, they uh, TiVo the people are DVR company, although the people still use TVO. They probably do. I don't know. It's like every local cable company has around d v R now

it seems like it. But um, they were able to say that was the most replayed clip uh in the history of TVO up into that point was people pausing and rewinding. That's stupid, stupid stunt, right, But like you were saying, they've now decided, um, but at least some networks have decided they're gonna start counting. Um. What's called the DVR I'm so better the DVR plus system, which is DVR UM live plus Same Day. Yeah, that's the

Nielsen method. Live plus three days or Live plus three and then Live plus seven, which is obviously Live plus same days if you just watch it later that night. Um plus three is three days within three days, and then seven is within that week. And I'm staying like, conflicting information out there. Seems like either they they now have basically just Live plus Live plus three, which is um like their main measurement. Well, what matters is what

the advertisers say is what we care about. Like, you can have Live plus twenty, but if the advertisers are like, we don't care about Live plus twenty, that doesn't do anything for us exactly, It's true, but it sounds like you're right. Like at one point they tried to say that Live plus same Day is basically the same thing Nielsen did and the advertising and they wanted to lump it together with Live and and the advertisers like, no,

that's really not the same because of the fast forwarding thing. Yeah, so let's at least separate these numbers out so we can look at it all as individually. Yeah. Um, the thing is is the people who are watching TV, you know, I EU and I UM, we don't care what the advertisers think. And they basically just need to keep up

with our viewing habits, which are changing radically. Yeah, the broadcast networks have lost seventeen percent of the most coveted demographic eighteen to forty nine year olds between two thousand and twelve and two thousand just gone. Part of that is because the networks put out terrible, terrible stuff, although

so did the cable networks these days too. But another part of it is because broadcast is stuck in this sweep weeks sweeps week um certain time and on a certain day format that has been in forever since the fifties,

and they're being basically held hostage by Nielsen's ratings. So there's been a real push to advance technologically and to start taking into account these other myriad ways that people consume television and uh, getting a clear picture of what an audience is doing, and the fact that it's now computer based and we have ways of tracking computers. Really, broadcasters are as excited as ever and we just have

to figure out how to do it. And we'll talk about how they're trying to figure out how to do it right after this, Chuck. Yeah, we love squares space dot com, don't we. Yeah, Because if you're in need of a website and you're just a regular shamo and not a like a programmer, there's really no easier, better way to do it, that's right. Because squarespace uses Dragon Drop intuitive building of websites. Yeah, you don't have to

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com slash stuff offer code stuff. Well, one thing before we get to the internet, um that we haven't mentioned yet is you might hear in UH TV parlance the word share as opposed to rating. Uh. And what that is is is a share is how many people are watching a certain TV show that are actually watching TV. UM. A rating is just how many people are watching it, But the share is how many people what share of people are watching a show that are watching something other

people like? If your TV is off, it doesn't count. Know that your share numbers always gonna be higher. Yeah it is. But the rating is the the number of people watching it compared to the entire population of America, right exactly for Canada. Yeah, I keep forgeting about Canada. They steal our shows. UM. So now we're onto the the newest development. Um DVRs kind of threw a wrench in the plans, but they're trying to take those into account and they've they've been pretty successful, it seems like

with that. Yeah, once they settle on what they all agree is a valid thing measurement, Yeah, valid measurement. Um. But now, of course, people are consuming TV online more than ever, on their laptops, on their tablets, their mobile devices. Can throw out some figures for you real quick, Chuck, Please consider this A hundred and sixteen million television sets

in the United States. There's a hundred and thirteen million tablets, Yeah, a hundred and sixty six million smartphones, and two hundred and forty three million Internet connected computers, double the amount of televisions in the US. And people are watching stuff whenever they want, however they want on this and as it stands right now, Nielsen is still trying to figure

out how the heck they can most effectively track these people. Yeah, well, this is the the first year, uh, this fall TV season will be the very first year that uh, they're gonna supposedly have a across the board measurement system with TV ratings that will include viewership on everything including your mobile device. And it's forced some innovation too, because the Nielsen can't just say, oh, well, we'll add like an eavesdropper onto your tablet or your smartphone because it will

drain your battery. Yeah, what it will probably be is a is a third party app or piece of software. And it makes sense. It seems like it would be easier than ever to track watching habits in the near future. Okay, it is. If your Google, if you're Nielsen, and you've been basically caught off guard by this since you know, you maybe started thinking about this in two thousand and eleven,

then you're in deep trouble. There's a very very effective way of tracking computer use, Chuck, and it's called cookies. And cookies have been around forever and they've gotten to the point now where they can plant cookies on your tablet,

your smartphone, your computer. However, you have all these things you use, and after a while, just from paying attention to the data they they they're the algorithm will basically say, I think these three cookies over here are the same person, and they'll put them together and all of a sudden, what was once three users is now one and the picture is that much clear of who Binge watched Season

two of True Blood this week. You know. So there's cookies out there and they've been around for a while, and they're very easy to get and very easy to use. And this is what New Wilson's up against. Yeah, and you may be saying yourself, well, who cares how people are watching it if it's online or on TV. But what matters is advertisers. Uh. If you've noticed if you watch shows online, like with Hulu or something, they're different commercials. You're not seeing the same stuff. And they still can't

even decide now what to count because they don't want to. Uh. You know, if if Brad Pitt does a pepsi commercial, he probably has it in his contract. Well, this can only run on on network on air TV in Thailand. Don't don't show me on Hulu. I don't want my commercial running online. If I show up in South Korea, you owe me ten million dollars. That's right. So they have a lot of control on how their images are seen.

Or maybe they maybe there's an awesome commercial that licensed, Um the who's won't get fooled again, it's only licensed for television. They can't show that same commercial online, so you're gonna have to show what some advertisers or or shows or networks might consider uh substandard ad, so they don't want to count that as a view. Yeah, and the same applies to TV shows to there there might be actors, writers that are just for on air and not for video distribution or um, just like with the ads.

So it seems to me like the the there's it's not just Nielsen's up against this. The networks are still trying to figure out things like TV everywhere, Like they want you to be able to watch TV everywhere you are at all times, because then they can serve you ads everywhere at all times and they can charge for

those kind of things. But they can't say how to track this yet one and not everything's cleared for all forms of media to the other problem with online viewing is that they don't have that all important demographic detail okay again though or they could though if they start using cookies, then they've got it right there. They that this is what advertisers are salvating over, like hyper targeted ads.

So like imagine if you and I are watching the same like classic episode a Saturday Night Live and I'm watching on my computer, you're watching on your computer. We're sitting right next to each other. We pressed play at the same time, the ad break gets to the same spot at the same time, and then boom, two different ads come up. Yeah, I get Team because I'm in my forties. You get a Ferrari ad because you're five or six years young. Exactly, That's exactly what would happen to.

So this is what advertisers want, like that level of targeted. But the Nielsen Company is still dominating. If they can catch up, the Nielsen Company will be around for another fifty hundred years. But again, they're up against cookie tracking right now. And if somebody can come along and be like, hey man, we've got all of your second screen data you could ever want, then again Nielsen is in big trouble.

Well there, our company is trying to do that. There's one called calm Score that says they can offer a single metric that it shows who's watching television across a single platform. You can think of time shifted, on demand, streaming, live, whatever calm scores is, they can do it. Uh. NBC has signed up with them and they haven't dropped Nielsen. You know, they're just spending more money to try and

get better tracking. Uh. There's another company. They did that in the two thousand fourteen Socy Olympics, right was at the trial. Yeah, I think that's when they rolled it out. Supposedly was super successful. Yeah, that's what they said. Um. And then there's another one called ring Track that uh. They their origins were just a video cassette distributor, but they realized that that was going nowhere in two thousand

fourteen even worse. Yeah, they diversified into TV ratings and they use cable set top boxes and right now have deals with seventy networks and three D TV stations and basically the competition. David Poltrak, he's a chief research officer for CBS Corporation, said that it's the competition on the research front is the most intense it's ever been and

pretty exciting time. Yeah. And Nielsen actually those um FTC antitrust settlement where I think the way I understand it is that Nielsen was using uh, they they acquired a company called Arbitron, which is a specialist in radio and out of home measurement, and I think there was an antitrust suit saying like you can't be the only people

using this. So they've now licensed that out. Uh, we're forced, I think, to license it out to Calm Score, who is now using that portable people meter, not purple people eaters. And I think I'm understanding that correctly. But the long and the short of it is, unless they get this right, they think they're missing out on as much as of TV viewing is going unaccounted for at this point. So if you like you're a network or something like that, that's ad revenue, right, that's an ad rate hike that

you aren't it. If you're an advertiser, that's like a whole like ghost group that you may or may not be getting your product in front of. But like you can't say either way, Um, there's yeah, having ten or fifercent of the advertising or viewing audience on accounting for it is not acceptable to me. Not in modern America, buddy.

This is what I think is gonna happen. I think they're gonna get their their jazz together UM and be able to track who watches a show down to a UM and the people who make the shows will sell a package to an advertiser, and the advertiser spot runs in that show no matter where it's consumed. So it's like a three sixty deal. Basically, like this show is going to be broadcast live or broadcast on on the NEPs, it's going to be up on our player, you're gonna

be able to watch it on tablet. But in all these it's going to be when you buy an ad spot, it goes with the show, no matter where the show goes. I could. And then there's another happy aspect of tracking viewing, like down to this granular detail, your shows are more likely to be saved. Our show, again, I say, would not have been helped by any of this. But the

whole reason community was online are still on air. It was because the NBC was smart enough to be like, oh, well wait a minute, Like, yeah, it's ratings are abysmal traditionally speaking, but on Twitter it actually trends. It's like a worldwide trend that's valuable, and they figured out that this is this is something you have to take into account. Nielsen has as well. They launched a partnership with Twitter, who in turn bought like a basically a TV trend

tracking service. So now Nielsen's going to start taking Twitter trending into account into its ratings. And I think they think Nielsen has a deal with Facebook too, right, I believe, so to try and uh see like and what's trending? I guess yeah, And so now it's not just going to be how many people are watching, how many people are talking about it, how people like dress up like that character on you know that night? That kind of thing. Um so really neat inventive shows that don't get a

huge national audience. Sure, we'll maybe have a longer life. We must still have freaks and geeks. It's the yes, that would be nice. Although that was a perfect run and encapsulated in one season. Yeah, it's pretty great. And everyone on that show went on to be huge movie stars almost well, not everyone, but a lot of them did most of them? Um Man, you know who, if we would have had time, who we should have talked to you about this was Luke Ryan. Oh yeah, our

buddy Luke Is. He's movies though, right, well now he does. He knows all about this stuff. He does TV as well. But he's just talking to him is like he's always one step ahead. He's very very forward thinking guy. And I bet he would verify your theory on where we're headed, maybe tweak it. Well, Luke if you're out there listening, let us know you'd better be listening. Um. And also, I'm eternally grateful to Luke Ryan for my Billy's ABCA signed tub time Machine poster. That's right, that's how we

first met him. Right, that's pretty cool. Uh. If you want to know more about Luke Ryan or TV ratings, you can type either of those two into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. Uh. And since I said Luke Ryan, not Luke Brian, that's different. I don't even know who. Look Brian is. Oh, he's a huge, big time country star. That's why I don't know who. Do you know? He's sold out like two shows at Madison Square Gardens and like apparently he's the only one

to ever do that. He's huge. Now what do people sell out multiple shows at Madison Square Garden all the time? Like Bruce sells out like six eight in a row. He's one of them. Okay, maybe he broke like the time record or something, but he's a he's a good guy too. Though his name isn't Ellie Nelson, then I don't know him well. Anyways, time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this train conductor I love that job. We had one that wrote in. Um Hey, guys, been wanting

to write in for a while now. I've been waiting until I could think of something interesting to relate to you. I found your podcast a while back in February. Is looking for something to listen to while I commute to work working out a pin station for the Long Island Railroad as a train conductor, means my hours tend to have me driving home anywhere from midnight to three am. Prior to finding your show, all I listened to our

audiobooks or the radio. But I got bored with all that after a while, and I noticed my eyelids were getting heavier and heavier, which is about seventy miles door to door. I'm going trip. Yeah, it's no good enter stuff. You should know from the first time I listened to you, guys have been wide awake, amused, and attended the whole drive. That's why I want to thank you guys for keeping me alive, because if not for your show, I'm sure I would have fallen asleep and driven off the road.

Ever since childhood, I've always been fascinated about history and learning how things work. Uh, and was evident by me dismantling my toys and attempting to put them back together. Although it's funny. In the end, I always had extra parts. So again, thank you for accompanying me on my drive home every night. It's been nice having three friends in the car. Although one of you is extremely silent. That's Jerry. And by the way, Jerry didn't get canceled. We were

just joking, all right, she's she's on the air. Uh, and that is from Angel, Cartagena and Bethel, Connecticut, or on Hell. I wondered about that, he says, ps if it becomes listener, Male, I know you both try so hard to pronounce things. My last name is Cartagena, like the city in Romancing the Stone. But he didn't say if it's end Hell or Angel. If his last name is Cartagena, it's on Hell, I would think, but we'll see, we will see. Let us know on Hell. That's what

I'm going with, all right. Uh, if you want to let us know how to pronounce your name, We're always happy to hear from buddies out there who listen and listening land. You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can post the nunciation of your name on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com, and, as always, hang out with us at our home on the web, Stuff you

Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff Works dot com