Ratings

[wizard]

How do TV companies establish how many viewers they get on TV programs?

[g.withnail]

Contrary to popular belief, they don't have some kind of national detector! A selected number of households (presumably a representative cross-section) have a device installed which monitors their viewing, and the ratings are extrapolated from this sample. However, I'm not sure why they do all this, because there's never anything decent on TV!!!

[councillor]

The correct answer is via electrical surges which are monitored by the National Grid before and after the programme has started and ended.

[Chris123]

No the real answer is that they have x amount of people at any time filling out surveys on what tv or radio they listen to or watch. From this they estamate how many people are watching. Simple but true

[mikewith]

There's an article on this subject here: http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Article.go?id=3351

[catkingirl]

How come I've never met anyone who has filled in these surveys/had these boxes installed??

[XxHeatherxX]

There's only about 4 1/2 to 5 thousand people with these. I've never met one as well.