ChuckTV.net The CHUCK archive
With minimal competition last night thanks to reruns and low-rated specials on other networks, Chuck saw a nice ratings increase as we head into the winter hiatus. Per the fast overnights, approximately 6.1 million viewers tuned in to watch Timothy Dalton and Linda Hamilton re-enter Chuck’s world. “Chuck vs. the Leftovers” pulled a nice 2.0 in the 18-49 demo as well, a hefty bump from last week’s 1.7 rating.
As a reminder, new episodes of Chuck return January 17 when NBC launches its new Monday lineup of Chuck, The Cape, and Harry’s Law. We’ll be hosting a weekly re-watch of season 4 in the meantime; stay tuned for details!
The 5 networks combined lost 20 million viewers overall and a 5.0 drop in the overall 18-49 demo.
2.0 is okay (a lot better than 1.7), but considering that massive drop I was hoping for more.
A 2.0 ties our season high (for the premiere), on a night when 20 million fewer people were watching TV, so I’m quite pleased.
The Sept 27 and Nov 1 episodes were also a 2.0s, and both of those were against solid competition. I was just hoping for more than a 4th 2.0 against the weakest competition it will see all season.
Don’t get me wrong – the bounce back up from last week is good. I wanted to see some gains though, not just a return to the 1.9-2.0 status quo. Maybe it’ll go up to 2.1 in the finals…
Of the 20 millions who usually watch TV but didn’t, you can bet that the 5 millions who wouldn’t miss “Chuck” if their house burnt down were not among them. What this tells me is that 1 million extra viewers gave “Chuck” a shot. Even though there were 20 millions fewer from which to draw them. Good news, I’d say.
“Of the 20 millions who usually watch TV but didn’t, you can bet that the 5 millions who wouldn’t miss “Chuck†if their house burnt down were not among them.”
Agree to that. Well, other than the 5m number, given last week’s 4.8m.
“What this tells me is that 1 million extra viewers gave “Chuck†a shot. Even though there were 20 millions fewer from which to draw them. Good news, I’d say.”
I don’t view it that way at all. The viewer drop for ABC, CBS and Fox was actually close to 22m. Out of 22m viewers up for grabs, Chuck picked up a paltry 1.4m. CW also picked up 1.2m from last week (but last week was a re-run for them, and the gain just put them back around season norms). Let’s not forget either that the gain was against not just the season low but the series low of 4.8m last week, and brought it up to about the same level as the season premiere.
I’m sorry, but I think the circumstances were ripe for some big gains. But the only gains were actually a recovery from the losses against the DWTS finale last week and a marginal boost in the (meaingless compared to the 18-49 demos) total viewers compared to the rest of the season.
I’m working off Mel’s statement that 20 mil fewer watched TV at all, not that they didn’t watch ABC, CBS and FOX. So out of a typical pool LESS 20 mil, “Chuck” picked up 1 mil. Had those 20 mil decided to watch TV rather than, say, go shopping, a certain percentage would have likely augmented that bump in the “Chuck” numbers.
Those 20 million didn’t watch because DWTS became SWTS, and CBS and Fox were both showing re-runs.
The majority of those 20 million didn’t turn the TV off because they decided to do something else. They decided to do something else because they didn’t feel there was anything worth watching this week. They evaluated what else was on, and tuned out instead.
I just hope that NBC promotes the show. The season has been the best so far in my opinion and folks are missing out.
You guys should update the spoilers section… Air date for 4.11 still says TBA…(yea I’m a huge nerd and notice things like that.) thanks!
Now that we have some spare time, we’ll be doing more updating there.
How will I survive until January 17?
3 seasons on DVD
When you have watched all favourite eposides (e.g. NO Shaw or Cole Barker, or Bryce hooking up with Sarah) at least 25 times and you have read all the cool fanfic, it is kinda hard because you know Chuck wants to marry Sarah. Besides this episode gave us a hint Chuck is very close to a proposal, because if he was not attacked by the assasins he would have shown Sarah the wedding ring shop :D.
Can’t forget reading the graphic novel either…
That’s what I intend to do; watching my favorite episodes of the last 3 seasons and half!
It’s nice that “Chuck” is up again in the ratings!
It tends to prove that the usual ratings the show gets is not because of the quality, but because of the competition on the other networks. And I think NBC will take that into consideration.
I’ll do the same. Mondays with DVD and Chuck until January 17.
Even more encouraging in the second half it was 2.1 with 6.25 million viewers.
Lets hope these extra viewers liked what they saw. I know I sure did.
Timothy Dalton and Linda Hamilton were great, and Morgan doing Die Hard was so funny I almost fell out of my chair.
very glad the ratings have gone up i have been worried the last couple of weeks. I don’t know how im going to get through to january.
It seems like Chuck is always prey to circumstance which is really too bad…A jump in the ratings (viewership) right before the show goes off the air for 7 weeks so there is little chance of building or creating any momentum.
Six weeks without CHUCK ! That’s worse than a double root
canal……without novacane.
It’s almost the same long period like the one between 3 & 4! OMG! And Dexter will end in 2 weeks too! Thank God there’s Vampire Diaries and Big Bang Theory!
I’m surprised the rating didn’t go all the way to 6.0 in the demo. I mean seriously, Timothy Dalton and Linda Hamilton.EPIC!!! Though I am extremely pleased with a 2.0 in the demo especially after last week gosh awful 1.7.
Nice to see the ratings go up. I was hoping for more than a 2.0 with a lot less competition, but since less people were watching tv overall, that makes sense. I thought the episode was alright. I would have liked to see Casey actually be able to use the mini guns in the Buy More and I also would have liked to see Morgan actually be able to use the gun taped to his back. I mean, come on. He’s not that bad. Also, I guess Chuck is very close to proposing. Although, when I saw them arrive at the ring shop, I was like, oh no, please don’t propose to her there. For me, this episode wasn’t as good because I found myself trying to compare it to Phase 3, which wasn’t a good idea.
I’ve never understood exactly how the ratings system works. Mel, how many viewers does each .1 represent? Or better yet, what’s the relationship between the rating and the number of viewers? According to spoilertv, Skating with the Stars got a horrible 1.2 (.8 less than Chuck) but it still had 6.5 million viewers (.4 more than Chuck). I don’t see how that is possible.
I know I’m not Mel, and I certainly don’t wish to step on toes, but may I suggest one place to read up on the ratings system?
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/demystifying-the-s
It does a fairly good job of explaining the whole ratings thing, along with a PDF direct from Nielsen’s about definitions and explanations of some of the basic terms. There’s also the Nielsen company itself, but I recommend trying this page (and the FAQ for Numbers 102 as well). They do a fair job of trying to demystify the whole ratings process.
Thanks for posting the link, Northwind. My toes are fine. 🙂
Thanks for that article. It helped quite a bit. Now I understand why the Nielsen box is needed. That puts you in the Nielsen Universe. I do have a few clarifications to ask about. 1. From what I read I understand that you have to have a Nielsen box to contribute to the x.y rating we get, correct? 2. So therefore, all of us without a Nielsen box can only contribute to the # of total viewers, correct? 3. Since I don’t know anyone at all who has a Nielsen box, is it just me or is the whole x.y ratings system totally flawed and ridiculous, especially since that’s what the networks look at the most? 4. You guys might not have the answer to this, but I’m just wondering, why does it have to be only the people with a Nielsen box? I mean, with all the advanced technology and computers that we have today, why can’t they just have all boxes transmit data to Nielsen? In other words, why can’t the sample size be ALL homes, not just the ones with Nielsen boxes? 5. The reason I asked this question is that I’ve been looking at SpoilerTV’s ratings data, and I hope it’s not the data the industry uses because to me it’s pretty much impossible to understand. The reason for that is because in SpoilerTV’s data, the “out of” number is always changing. Example: “House got a 4.0/7 last night. DWTS got a 6.2/10 last night”. 7 and 10. Why aren’t they the same number? That doesn’t make any sense to me because unless that number is the same, you really can’t compare them to each other. Thanks for helping me out with this guys. We’ll find out who won the TV Guide cover in a few days! Hopefully it’s us.
A lot of people who read and post in that website have asked the same questions. The answers vary (both in information and intensity of delivery by poster). It can get…enthusiastic in there sometimes (and not just on this question, but on other subjects as well) 😉
If I am off-base on any of these answer attempts, other people can correct me. I’m still learning some of this fancy lingo and how it works, too. And corrections with examples and links would be most appreciated. 🙂
Anyway,
1) Nielsen boxes are the engine that drive the ratings. They are kept by families that act as a sampling representative of viewing. These boxes move around from house to house by Nielsen on an irregular basis (never looked into it, but I’m guessing Nielsen likes to keep things shifting so as not to have a settled pattern creep in, just opinion, though). There are other methods (Nielsen diaries, for example), but the boxes are the main engine of ratings gathering.
2) Since the Nielsen boxes are a sampling system, I don’t think that even viewing the show without a box or diary actually helps the ratings, unfortunately. This is one area I admit a bit of fog on but I think that’s where things are — no Nielsen box or diary, no influence.
3) The system does have its critics, and some of those criticisms have some validity to them. One example — the size of the pool of Nielsen box “families” is about 25,000 units. There are about 116,000,000 television sets (estimated) in the United States. If the primary ratings numbers for all television shows are based on 25,000 units of Nielsen boxes scattered across the United States, then that means that 1 out of every 4,640 televisions (and the owner(s) of that television) are the people whose viewing habits count in the ratings. That’s a pretty small number for a sampling pool — less than 0.03% of the televisions out there.
Put it this way — New York City has a population of approximately 8,400,000 (rounded up). If only 1 in 4,640 people could vote for government officials for that city, then only 1,810 people could vote out of that whole population.
The Nielsen system does not account for public viewership very well (if at all), so sports bars, college dorm recreation areas, airport terminals (although, to be fair, who bothers with televisions at airports unless there are delays? 😉 ) are not included in counts, either. It’s also not currently set up to account for most online viewership (legal or otherwise). However, in the first half of 2011, there is movement in that area to start accounting for that. We shall see how that works out.
In spite of all this, however, the networks and advertisers use this as the gold standard for determining ad investments and a show’s survival. The reason? There’s not a better system available at this time. Nielsen is working on it, but who knows what the changes will be or when it will be done (and how well it will work).
Gesh, I knew that was getting long, should have cut that last comment off sooner. Sorry about that book, I’ll try to keep this chapter shorter.
4) Why no ratings box in all homes? Speculative guesses are money (who pays for the box, besides, ultimately, the customer), information gathering methodology (how does the information get sent, and how often, and by what medium — phone? Satellite? carrier pigeon?), privacy regulations (does the programming in the box violate some sort of FCC regs and/or create a Big Brother fear?), requirements for repairs (who fixes it, Nielsen, or the owner of the TV? Replace the whole unit? How much to repair, replace, and does a service repair person drop by to do it?), and technology merging (will the new boxes work with older televisions that people still use? what about computers, or can those just use a software package for viewing data gathering?)
I agree the technology is there to do it. Getting it done, with the massive required resources — and dealing with everything from the money issues to the privacy issues and the possible spyware, hacking, and related issues, is a bit of a problem, though.
5) I advise in advance that this is a wikipedia link, but I am not finding what I am looking for to explain this difference at the site I linked to earlier. I know it has been explained there in the past, just not finding it now. 😕 I did look at the sources cited, though, and I think you can trust this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Ratings
And look for these words –> “Ratings/share and total viewers”. That heading has a fairly clear (although a bit complicated, but if you navigated the other pages, you should be able to travel this bit as well) explanation that should answer why those numbers keep changing. 🙂 You only need to read the first two paragraphs in that section.
Hope that helps.
Have a good night. 🙂
Thank you very much for the information. I don’t mind the length because i often submit long comments. Not to mention I appreciate the detail.
I can’t believe the Nielsen sample size is that small. That’s horrifying. The networks should punish Nielsen for having such a crappy sample size. No wonder people say it’s broken. Thinking about that sample size makes the ratings of DWTS and American Idol seem impossibly high and unrealistic. It’s a good thing NBC looks at the Hulu viewing also. It sounds like Nielsen is having a bit of a hard time adapting to the new ways people are watching shows, which, unfortunately, also sounds like every other part of the entertainment industry (make a note, RIAA. This especially applies to you).
I understand your point about why there aren’t Nielsen boxes in all homes. The movement in that direction would definitely have to take place gradually. I do have a simple solution: have cable companies install a little extra piece of hardware or maybe even a small program that sends data anonymously to Nielsen about what shows were watched live during prime time and DVRed until 3am. No privacy would be violated, and I would think that repairs wouldn’t be that hard to deal with. Maybe an even better solution is to simply have the new internet connectable tvs send anonymous data to Nielsen over a secure connection.
Anyway, seeing how small that sample size is makes me even more amazed that Chuck gets the numbers that it does. Dang were lucky.
Thought this was one of the best Chuck episodes of the season, maybe even the series. The comedic moments were absolutely hilarious, and I thought the plot was extremely strong. Nice to see it bounce back after last week’s rough go of it. Hopefully NBC advertises Chuck a little more to reel in more viewers for the second half of the season.
YIPPIE-KAI-YAY MOTHERLOVER!!! This was the best ep of the season! They deserved it! By the way, I am writing this while eating a celebratory Bartowski Special sandwich. (ham and American Cheese on white bread with lettuce, green pepper, and mayo) See ya’ll soon!
YAY!!!!!!! That makes me soooo happy(: Way to go Chuck! (:
The more I think about it, the more I agree.
The more I think about it, the more I agree.