How do TV ratings work now that everything is streaming? How do networks know what shows are hits? How is it all compiled and analyzed? Did that woman who watched the Bee Movie 400 days in a row skew the data?
In: Technology
I don’t really see your question. The data analysis of most viewed shows works the same as before. Every streaming service knows when someone choose a show and starts watching it. Just as a TV channel knows who many viewers are connected to their channel at the airing time of the episode.
Everything is just a simple count. When play a show in Netflix, you are requestion the server to send you the video. Then, that requests counts 1 into that show viewer count. I think there’s more to your question but I don’t see it
The data is much more accurate now with streaming services. They know every show being watched at all times and how many households are watching it. Absolutely every piece of data about your viewing habits is tracked and sold back to the production companies.
The woman who watched Bee Movie 400 times doesn’t matter because it’s easy to tell that it is the same person, so it still only counts as 1 unique household.
With network television and the old Nielsen rating system, the data isn’t as perfect and its just a statistical approximation, because they aren’t tracking everyone. If one household with a 25-35 year-old person is watching, they simply guess that means some thousands of people of that same age group are also watching.
Think of a broadcast as a single stream that everyone has to watch at the same time. It’s actually pretty difficult to get ratings figures, because you only send out one ‘copy’ of the show. You have to use surveys – literally ask a bunch of people, and then extrapolate the final number.
With streaming, your device is requesting the show from a computer called a server. The server sends a copy of the show to whomever requests it. To measure ratings, all we need to do is count the number of requests for the show.
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