Nielsen ratings are very important to both advertisers and television programmers because the cost of television advertising time is based on this rating. A show's rating is the number of households in Nielsen's sample tuned to that program divided by the number of television-owning households- 115 million in the United States. A show's share of the viewing audience is the number of households watching that show divided by the number of households using TV at that time. That is, ratings consider all TV-owning households whereas share considers only households that actually have the television turned on at the time. Ratings and share are usually given together. For example, suppose that one hour on Sunday evening showed the following ratings/shares for the major broadcast networks:
Network Program Rating/Share NBC Sunday Night Football (played on Thursday) 13.6/22 CBS Big Brother 12 4.6/8 ABC Wipeout 3.1/5 FOX Bones 2.9/5 The CW The Vampire Diaries 2.0/3 1.
1) if one rating point represents 1 percent of TV households, how many households were watching football that evening? How many households were tuned into The Vampire Diaries ? (AACSB: Communication; Analytical Reasoning)
2.) What total share of the viewing audience was captured by all five networks?