What Those Nielsens Mean

Advertisers use Nielsen ratings to determine how many viewers watch a particular program or event. Ratings are simply percentages.

For example, 1 rating point represents 1% of the nation’s 122 million television households. A 1 share represents 1% of the nation’s households where television is being watched at the time.

The A.C. Nielsen Co. of New York was founded in 1923 to gauge radio audiences. It first began measuring TV audiences in 1951 by putting meters in selected homes.

According to a Nielsen spokesman, there are 20,000 metered English-speaking Nielsen homes and 1,000 Spanish-speaking homes spread across the country that specify which channels are being watched. There are 5,000 other homes with more modern meters, introduced in 1987, where residents manually enter what they are watching.

Nielsen also sends out 1.6 million diaries to selected viewers who are asked to keep track of the programs they watch.

Television audiences in hotels and restaurant-bars are not measured.

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ALL-TIME TOP TELEVISION PROGRAMS

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N. Program Date Network Rating % 1. M*A*S*H (last episode) 2/28/83 CBS 60.2 2. Dallas (Who shot J.R.?) 11/21/80 CBS 53.3 3. Roots (Part 8) 1/30/77 ABC 51.1 4. Super Bowl XVI 1/24/82 CBS 49.1 5. Super Bowl XVII 1/30/83 NBC 48.6

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