Changes to Nielsen TV Ratings System Arriving Soon

Television ratings data firm Nielsen Holdings reportedly will be enacting new major changes to their Nielsen ratings system starting this Fall, according to Outkick.com.

It was reported that Nielsen’s upcoming new ratings tracking device will be portable and will be able to count television viewership in places outside of the home such as bars, restaurants, and airports. This device reportedly works by capturing and recognizing the audio of a television show that a person is currently watching away from their home.

A source close to Outkick stated that this device is speculated to be able to quickly recognize if the audio being captured from a television set is not from an actual show or is from commercial breaks and would not count those minutes towards that person’s viewership of the show. The same source also stated that this device will also not count television viewership if a viewer is wearing headphones while watching a show on their mobile device.

There’s also going to be interesting scenarios at bars and restaurants that air sports but play music during commercials. In this scenario, one source expects that if there’s, say, a 200-minute game and the sound of the game is on for 160 minutes, this viewer would be counted for 160 minutes in the average minute audience but not the other 40. Any time you watch something with headphones out of the house (as in at a gym; streaming numbers are measured separately from TV viewership), it thus won’t get counted.

It was also reported that sporting events, especially major ones, are currently expected to be the biggest benefactors of these upcoming new ratings changes because those are often watched at bars.