TV Executives Are Sneaky

July 11, 2017 in Daily Bulletin

Joe Flint wrote about TV executives manipulating advertizers:

  • During Memorial Day weekend NBC seemingly had a typo in its lineup. Instead of watching “NBC Nightly News” people watched “NBC Nitely News”.
  • It was intentional. By having a typo Nielsen, an automated ratings calculation system, assumed it was a new show, and didn’t count the lower Memorial Day weekend ratings as part of the show’s overall ratings.
  • This helped NBC look like it was rated higher than it was, and allowed it to charge advertizers higher rates.
  • NBC did this 14 times during the 2017-2017 TV season. CBC did it 12 times and ABC did it seven times.
  • Executives have also tried to trick the system into thinking that a second airing of a program later in the evening should add to the viewer tally of the initial showing.
  • And CBC successfully manipulated the system to deceptively indicate that “Bull” was the most watched new show of the season.
  • Ad industry executives are understandably upset they’re being misled about how many people are actually seeing their ads.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal.