How the Hell Do Nielsen Ratings Actually Work?

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 847 Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Nielsen’s Brian Fuhrer to explain the mysterious world of ratings and how they actually work in 2025. They get into how Nielsen literally tracks viewing habits, how that has changed over the years, and how they now track out-of-home viewing. Then, they look at a surprising metric about the Oscars ratings, discuss how streaming is improving ratings among younger demos, and which shows are the most influential in terms of attracting a younger audience (03:00). Matt finishes the show with an opening weekend box office prediction for the new Bong Joon-ho film, ‘Mickey 17’ (25:53). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! [email protected] Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Brian Fuhrer Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Bill Simmons letting you know that we are covering the White Lotus on the Prestige TV podcast and the Ringer TV YouTube channel every Sunday night this season with Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson.
0:11.0	Also, on Wednesdays, Rob Mahoney and I will be sort of diving deep into theories and listener questions.
0:16.9	So you can watch that on the Ringer YouTube channel and also on the Spotify app.
0:20.9	Subscribe to the Prestige podcast feed.
0:23.4	Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel.
0:25.8	And don't forget, you can also watch these podcasts on Spotify.
0:30.5	White Lotus. Let's go.
0:35.0	It is Thursday, March 6th.
0:42.3	Despite how you may have felt about the Oscars, the Academy and ABC are feeling pretty good.
0:49.0	The ratings went up a whole 1% from last year, 19.7 million viewers. That's according to Nielsen,
0:55.8	which took into account the linear TV broadcast and the viewing on Hulu, the first for the Oscars. Of course, it wasn't great when the Hulu broadcast just stopped for some people, right in the big categories.
1:00.3	But the Nielsen number took that into account, and despite competition for consumption data in
1:05.1	the streaming age, Nielsen is still the most widely accepted arbiter of who's watching what.
1:10.5	It's just harder now.
1:11.8	Viewership is fractured and time shifted.
1:14.4	Advertisers want granular data on who exactly is watching and when.
1:19.0	The stuff that the digital platforms, like Facebook and the rest,
1:22.4	they can provide them in excruciating detail.
1:25.8	Streamers hoard their data and cherry pick what they want to release in the streaming
1:29.3	business.
1:29.9	I'm looking at you, Apple TV Plus, and Amazon.
1:32.5	But Nielsen's status as a neutral third party has always made its numbers very valuable,
	...

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