Comcast/NBC Caught Intentionally Misspelling Show Names To Help Hide Sagging Nielsen Ratings
from the obvious-integrity dept
The cable and broadcast industry goes to some amusing lengths to downplay cord cutting and streaming competition's impact on ratings and subscriber totals. Initially the impulse was just to insist that cord cutting wasn't real. When the data made outright denial impossible, the industry began insisting cord cutting was only something done by irrelevant nobodies living in mom's basement or Millennials who would see the error of their ways once they procreated. Of course data repeatedly showed that these people were the norm, and now we're looking at potentially one of the biggest quarterly subscriber losses in television history.
As ratings have reflected the industry's dying cash cow, they've also taken consistent aim at viewership measurement systems as well. A bone of particular contention has been Nielsen, which is stuck between trying to accurately measure the damage and cater to myopic cable and broadcast clients that can't hear well with their heads buried firmly in the sand. A few years ago, Nielsen was forced to stop publicizing the rise in broadband-only (not TV) households. More recently, ESPN tried to publicly shame Nielsen when the company accurately highlighted the massive subscriber exodus happening at the channel.
But the cable and broadcast industry has been engaged in some other notable shenanigans to try and protect the illusion that everything is going swimmingly. The Wall Street Journal indicates that the industry has increasingly been going so far as to intentionally misspell their programs in program listings. Why? Because when they know a show is going to see a ratings dip, listing it under another name prevents its core listing from being impacted in the Nielsen ratings:
"That explains the appearance of "NBC Nitely News," which apparently aired on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend this year, when a lot of people were away from their TVs. The retitling of “NBC Nightly News” fooled Nielsen’s automated system, which listed “Nitely” as a separate show. Hiding the May 26 program from Nielsen dramatically improved the show’s average viewership that week," the report adds. "Instead of falling further behind first-place rival 'ABC World News Tonight,' NBC news narrowed the gap."
The Journal goes on to note how this has been a sort of "open secret" in the industry for several years, but as cord cutting has begun to accelerate, its use has increased. At one point, NBC intentionally misspelled "NBC Nitely News" every night for a week. And all of this appears to be happening with the blessing of Nielsen, which again tries to walk a tightrope between being taken seriously as a rating metric system and keeping paying cable and broadcast clients happy with manufactured tales from fantasy land.
For its part, NBC issued a statement that features a number of words, but at no point addresses the issue at hand:
"As is standard industry practice, our broadcast is retitled when there are pre-emptions and inconsistencies or irregularities in the schedule, which can include holiday weekends and special sporting events,” a show spokesman said."
Granted that sounds so much nicer than "we intentionally misspell our own programs to try and pretend our industry isn't facing a massive revolution we're ill-prepared for."
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Filed Under: news, nitely news, ratings
Companies: comcast, nbc, nielsen
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Fraud By Any Name...
"And all of this appears to be happening with the blessing of Nielsen, which again tries to walk a tightrope between being taken seriously as a rating metric system and keeping paying cable and broadcast clients happy with manufactured tales from fantasy land. "Or as we should more accurately describe it, "a concerted conspiracy to continue bilking marketers by misrepresenting the actual decline in TV, cable and broadcast, viewership, and thus a large, real reduction in the values of advertising placements on these media distribution channels."
tl;dr: collusive fraud against ad buyers.
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TV Executive #2: Not bad. An average week for us. But you should have seen how we did in the Neelson ratings. 200 million households per show! And people like to pretend cord cutting is real.
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Re:
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Are you saying
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Re: Are you saying
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Re: Are you saying
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Short sighted because of TIVO.
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Re: Short sighted because of TIVO.
As an aside, as a PVR user, the latter has happened to me. I have one series (that I can recall offhand) on indefinite hiatus (with a slowly climbing chance I'll just delete all remaining episodes unwatched) because one episode midseason failed to record and there was no way to get it from other legal sources: streaming didn't have it, no reruns airing on any channel, etc.
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Re: Re: Short sighted because of TIVO.
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"You know how Grandma's TV has something called...channels? Yeah, I think it's called channels. And there are breaks where they play commercials?"
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"ABC Has Best Nielsen Week In Years, Apparently Has No Shows Whatsoever"
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Being force fed commercials
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Re: Being force fed commercials
Naturally having laid out 10-15€, I resented being treated like a crook.
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Re: Being force fed commercials
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Money Talks...
There is no institution of man immune.
Science, Education, News & General Media, Government, Law Enforcement, Courts, your son and your daughter are all subject to doing things...
when the price is right
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I'll take Shortsighted Thinking for $1,000 Alex...
If the advertisers lose confidence in the data, they'll get their data from somebody else (instead of letting the networks pass it on), and it's unlikely that source is going to end up being Nielsen.
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Re: I'll take Shortsighted Thinking for $1,000 Alex...
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Re: Re: I'll take Shortsighted Thinking for $1,000 Alex...
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Re: Re: Re: I'll take Shortsighted Thinking for $1,000 Alex...
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Trust Vaccuum
When a system starts being manipulated, we can't trust it to reform itself any longer.
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Re: Trust Vaccuum
But websites don't need a sampling organization to determine their viewership numbers; they already have them. What benefit would they see in sharing or publishing those numbers?
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A Better Mousetrap
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Re: A Better Mousetrap
Of course, as has been mentioned this screws anyone with a DVR, since the show doesn't get recorded. It's also relatively easy for Nielsen to fix. Just add a step where the data is cleaned up. Possibly have someone set up a mapping by hand to re-name the shows.
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Re: Re: A Better Mousetrap
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Re: A Better Mousetrap
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Fraud By Any Name...
Or as we should more accurately describe it, "a concerted conspiracy to continue bilking marketers by misrepresenting the actual decline in TV, cable and broadcast, viewership, and thus a large, real reduction in the values of advertising placements on these media distribution channels."
tl;dr: collusive fraud against ad buyers.
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MON,20h: NOW ON NBC, GAME OF BONES!
TUE,21h: NOW ON NBC, GAME OF ZONES!
WED,18h: NOW ON NBC, GAME OF CONES!
THU,19h: NOW ON NBC, GAME OF DRONES!
FRI,22h: NOW ON NBC, GAME OF MOANS!
SAT,24: NOW ON NBC, GAME OF LOANS!
SUN,1h: NOW ON NBC, GAME OF CLONES!
Yeeeeeahhhh ... no ... because ... like ... IT'S STILL THE SAME SHOW, GODDANGIT!
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Drop?
Maybe, maybe, the end consumer is fooled, but other than paying the cable bill, or not as the case may be, who is actually fooled? The money lays with the advertisers, through the networks, who will be caught at their gamesmanship.
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Re: Drop?
It is the same strategy that some schools use by encouraging poor performers to drop out school to artificially inflate their test scores on the standardized testing. By eliminating (through unethical means) the worst performers the reported average goes up despite not actually doing a better job.
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Re: Drop?
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how is this not a felony?
misrepresentation
truth in advertising
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Re: how is this not a felony?
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What do you expect?
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Why stop with Nitely News
Of course, Neilson would show that it aired at 6:00pm. 7:00pm, and 11:00pm on every channel, but why nit-pick?
Or Neilson could figure out that the same news show airs every weekday at the same time, no matter what the network decides to call it, and then average the ratings together.
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