Television networks will be happy to know that ratings will go up for many of their programs next year, simply because the Nielsen company will count more people.
The company whose numbers provide the currency for the TV industry says its change will begin next September, when it begins accounting for people who watch outside of their homes. That news, first reported in Variety, means that people who watch in bars, airports, offices or anywhere on their phones or tablets will be accounted for in the measurements used to set advertising rates.
That's been a long time coming for networks, which have been prodding Nielsen to find a way to pick up this extra viewership for years. CNBC stopped subscribing to Nielsen four years ago, feeling cheated because Nielsen didn't count people who watched business coverage in offices.
"We think it's important," said Scott Brown, a Nielsen executive, on Tuesday. "We know that this is real viewership that wasn't being counted or measured and our goal is to measure everyone that is watching."
Based on its tests, Nielsen predicts that its count of people watching sports events will go up an average of 11 percent. News shows are averaging a 7 percent increase. For networks that traffic in that programming, that's real money — numbers that can be incorporated in what they charge for commercial time.
For example, Nielsen reported in February that 100.7 million people watched the Super Bowl. But with out-of-home viewership is counted, that added 12 million people.
Nielsen has spent years tinkering with the technology to achieve this, where viewership is counted through a portable device that picks up embedded audio signals. Typically, in-home viewership is counted through a device attached to television sets.
As the system has been tested for the past two years, Nielsen has been selling the out-of-home measurements to specific clients as an extra service.
Football is back in the picture now, and in last week's ratings NBC was the biggest beneficiary. The network's two prime-time NFL games helped it dominate the weekly competition, where NBC averaged 8.8 million viewers.
CBS landed in second with 3.7 million viewers, ABC had 3.5 million, Fox had 3.3 million, ION Television had 1.3 million, Univision had 1.2 million, Telemundo had 1.1 million and the CW had 610,000.
Serena Williams may have failed in her attempt to win a 24th Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open, but she was a ratings winner. ESPN's coverage of the women's U.S. Open Final reached 3.22 million viewers, while the men's final had 2.75 million. The men competed against opening weekend of the NFL, however.
ESPN was the week's most popular cable network, averaging 2.58 million viewers in prime time. Fox News Channel had 2.15 million, MSNBC had 1.37 million, HGTV had 1.2 million and TLC had 1.07 million.
ABC's "World News Tonight" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.4 million viewers. NBC's "Nightly News" was second with 7.5 million and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.4 million viewers.
For the week of Sept. 2-8, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships:
ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.
Online:
http://www.nielsen.com
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.
Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.
Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).
Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.
That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.
In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.
Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.
In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.
“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.
Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.
It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.
“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.
It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.
While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.
“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.
Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.
Jill Lawless contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
