ratings

Ratings is a term used to describe the methods used by radio, cable and terrestrial television programming measure their performance. Ratings are collated using audience measurement. There are two companies that gather audience measurements for ratings broadcast programming in the United States: The ratings industry breaks their statistics down in several ways, to express different measurements: All of the other ratings are broken down by demographics. Stations that might have weak overall ("12+") demographics may have strong enough ratings within a given, desired "demographic" to be attactive to advertisers, and thus profitable. For example, talk radio stations frequently have lower-than-average "12+" ratings, but much higher numbers among males age 35-54. Since the 35-54 male demographic is highly coveted by advertisers, such a station can be quite profitable. In addition to demographics, a key breakdown in ratings is the "Daypart", or segment of the broadcast day. In radio (and to...