TV Ratings for Portland vs Seattle

Well, what's a 0.2 rating. Is that 200,000 viewers or 300,000 viewers?

 

Aside from the fact that Neilsen is almost useless at accurate measurement; that translated to roughly 240,000 viewers. 82,5000 of those were in Portland and Seattle.

A rating of 1 equals 1% of television households. The US has around 116 million TV households.

The number does not count web viewing, alternative channels, nor does it do a good job with DVR.

 

Hope it's closer to 0.3 than 0.2. 300,000 is probably not out of the question if you include the Deportes numbers.

 

Honestly, if you include ESPN3, Deportes, and any replay on Matchday live you are probably in excess of 500,000. Not too mention that group watching in bars, etc is not counted.

 

so basically it got the same rating as your average MLS game. The problem with that rivalry is you are never going to get a big tv audience when the game starts at 11 PM EST.

 

Neilsen is like dept of motor vehicle , you stand in a line for 3 hrs and by the time you get to the window they tell you're in the wrong line. My personal feeling is that Neilsen don't even bother to track soccer.

 

This. The game probably would have had half again as many viewers nationwide if it kicked off at 8 Eastern.

 

They track what their families watch. There are only 25,000 Nielson families that are used to measure the watching habits of 116 million. They have long had a hard time with sports in general due to group watching, do not measure every channel, and have no way to measure internet feeds. In addition, they often do not count DVR feeds (depending on whether you are looking at share or advertising numbers). Bottom line, their entire approach is antiquated and works horribly for sports.

 

http://www.stumptownfooty.com/2011/...attle-score-in-the-ratings-and-an-explanation

 

The problem isn't the time slot but the second team - Portland.

It just doesn't have a name/national following yet.

Seattle-LAG would probably draw a lot better, as it has in previous years.

Then again, that was the WC era and all the related publicity that generated.

And Nielsen does what Nielsen does and that's how the ad rates are set.

The online streaming is a munute portion of the total audience anyway and bars and private/public parties are impossible to count but is generally thought of a garbage-in-garbage-out proposition.

 

Well, from my calculations a 0.2 rating could be as many as 232,000HH which could be as many as 350,000 viewers ~ NHL on Versus numbers.

 

Not that is would change things that much, but Portland-area pubs were packed for this game. A lot of soccer-followers, especially in Portland, go to big viewing parties, or pubs. I believe this trends across the nation too.

 

Saturday night is the worst night for television ratings by far. And 11 PM EST rather then 8 EST is far worse of a timeslot. Its why when they show USC football games on ABC on Saturday nights they kickoff at 8 EST.

 

sorry, by viewers I meant households since that is the only thing Nielson can actually measure (without guessing which is funny since their whole methodology is a guess). 232 is correct based on September 2010 TV household numbers. It is likely a higher number of total households now.

 

Ah, only took 13 posts to see the response I was waiting for....

 

I'll give a New Orleans example of this. When the Saints were in Super Bowl 44 the local TV ratings were huge, but it wasn't even the most watched saints game according to Nielson's. Now if anyone believes that fewer New Orleanians were less interested in the Saints playing in their first Super Bowl than a regular season contest, I'd like to sell you a bridge in the Mojave. What happened was that thousands upon thousands were watching in clubs around New Orleans.

 

Well, they report viewers all the time, so I am sure they have some methodology for figuring this out.

 

Nielson reports rating points and shares. The rating points is an estimate of households watching the program and the share is a percentage of all TVs in use that are tuned in. In addition they provide demographic information, regional info, etc etc. The number of viewers is an estimation based on Households and is really useless (not generally used by advertisers or networks). During sweeps, when they do the paper diaries those numbers will mean a bit more.

Take the numbers for what they are - the only way to measure viewership despite the fact that it is a horrible approach given todays technology. It is an estimate based on a sample set that is too small by statistical measure - but it is all we have.

 

nice try, but no. it had EVERYTHING to do with the timeslot, 11 pm eastern is way to late for any sporting event, let a lone a soccer game involving PacNW teams that most northeastern people couldnt name. hardly anybody watches sports on a saturday night. but moving the game to 7:30 eastern or about then would have had a major effect on the ratings.

 

It likely would have significantly dropped the local ratings if nothing else. 4:30 on an absolutely gorgeous Saturday afternoon would have been a tough sell in a region that has had very few nice days so far this year. 8:00 on one of the crappiest/wettest nights so far this year probably made for a nice home viewing audience.

 

In terms of Portland: A little surprised the numbers weren't higher since it was an away game. I am sure there were thousands watching away from their homes, but I still thought it would be at least around 3.0. They're still reasonable and have a lot to work with.

In terms of Seattle: Quite impressive. It was a home game, and they still had over 56,000+ watching from their homes. Watch parties were probably there too. The fact that they could get 56,000+ homes to watch AND have over 36,000 in their stadium shows that it can be done in MLS.

In terms of the national ratings: MLS still has a LONG way to go in that end. I'd say it's the league's toughest challenge other than DC United's stadium situation. Looking forward to the day that MLS' ESPN matches average at least 1.0 at the minimum.

 

IIRC Friday nights are a worse night for TV ratings overall than Sat nights. It's not call the "Friday Night Death Slot" for nothing. Not that Sat nights are much better.

 

Shoot that match wasn't too late for people that live in the MST or PST. I watched a good chunk of it online. But it was late.

It does better if it is in an earlier time slot. Not that it would have doubled but it would have done better.

(I think that is the first time I have ever used 5 two-letter words in a row )

 

I was still waiting for the ratings for the Galaxy/Red Bull encounter from the previous week. Have those ever been reported and I just missed them or do we not know them yet?

Of course, that game was also at 11 pm on the East Coast so it's highly unlikely those ratings would be too high.