The Number Are In...

Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1002 hrs

And the results aren't pretty.

In the television industry, we have what's called "The Book" (it's also sometimes known as sweeps). The book runs four times a year and lasts for about a month. The reason the book is such a big deal, is because that's when ratings count most (this is, of course, my understanding of it all. I could be way off here. I'm pretty much just basing what I know on what I've been told).

Everyday during sweeps, we get what are called "overnights". The overnights are ratings based on what shows the Nielson families watched the night before (ergo, overnights). The numbers aren't final, but I'm assured that they're pretty close.

The overnights for Thursday, 13 November 2003 (which we received on Friday morning), showed WWE Smackdown (UPN [4.2/6]) rated higher than both Tru Calling (FOX [3.2/5]) and The O.C. [R] (FOX [2.5/3]). We got spanked not only by UPN, but by WWE Smackdown! How sad is that?

So now you're probably wondering what all that crap in the brackets means. After The O.C., the [R] means that it was a re-run (it was a special second airing of some big episode. Actually, I think they just didn't have anything else to run since Skin got cancelled). The numbers boil down to this: rating (how many homes were actually watching) over share (percent of total potential viewing audience in homes). So, Tru Calling rated 3.2 (actual homes watching) and its share was 5 (percent of the total potential viewing audience in homes).

So how do they get these numbers? Click here to find out.