← The Town with Matthew Belloni
The Town with Matthew Belloni
Why the NFL (and Everything Else) Keeps Breaking Ratings Records
00:32:26
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- [00:00]
A
This episode of the Town is presented by HBO Max, presenting the Emmy Award winning HBO original series Hacks for your consideration, starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder. The new season picks up with Deborah Vance's late night show finally in production and Ava Daniels stepping in as head writer. To Deborah's dismay, their ever complicated relationship is pushed to new limits as they clash over creative direction and get entangled in blackmail and betrayal. Don't miss the series Slate says has never been better. Now streaming on HBO Max, this episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Wayfair's Black Friday sale is the perfect time to score huge deals on all things home, no matter what your style. Starting October 31, you can shop Wayfair's can't miss Black Friday deals all month long. Plus you can sit back and relax with Wayfair's fast and easy shipping just in time for the holidays. I am loving my new stuff from Wayfair. I got a couch and cover for the outdoors so it doesn't get rained on. We've got some rugs for the indoor family room. Next up, my kid's room. He needs a new bed. Wayfair's the place gonna get a kid bed for my nine year old. We're gonna get him probably some new shelves, maybe a rug, tie the whole room together. Everything's at Wayfair. Wayfair is the go to destination for everything home, no matter your style or budget. They make it easy with fast and free shipping even on the big stuff. They'll even help you set it up. Don't miss out on early Black Friday deals. Head to Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70% off. That's W A Y F A I R.com sale ends December 7th. It is Wednesday, December 3rd. If you've been following sports ratings this fall, Craig does pretty much nothing else. It's been a series of very enthusiastic headlines amid all the doom and gloom in the TV business. Every other day it's been one record breaking game after another. The NFL and college football ratings are up double digits for the big games. The World Series averaged more than 34 million viewers across the US, Canada and Japan. That's up 19% year over year. Then today we got the most eye popping news of them all. The Thanksgiving NFL game on CBS between the Chiefs and and the Cowboys set a new record for a regular season game according to Nielsen with more than 57.2 million viewers. So what's going on here? A Couple things. This is the first TV season for what Nielsen is calling its Big Data plus panel. That's measurement, where they take their annual survey panels of more than 100,000 people in the US and then they supplement it with data from 75 million devices like set top boxes, smart TVs, that kind of stuff that they say provides a more accurate account of who's actually watching this stuff. They also, as of earlier this year, are measuring 100% of out of home viewing, rather than the 65% that they did last year. That's like bars and restaurants, which were once woefully undercounted. The result has been a pretty consistent uptick for ratings for all live events, pretty much. And not just sports. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade audience hit 34 million people this year. That's up 8% on NBC and Peacock. But Nielsen says it's not just these new metrics that are leading to the surge. The out of home data contributes only a small boost, they say, and the better Big Data measurement can sometimes show a decline in viewership for some broadcasts. I've had a lot of questions about this stuff. To me, it seems like the field of play keeps shifting in the consumption data measurement business. And at a time when the TV business overall is in such flux and all these platforms are desperate to shift show growth. And there are so many complications in measurement these days. Everything from the proliferation of platforms where we watch content sometimes at the same time, to these streaming services hoarding a lot of this data. Though the big platforms do work with Nielsen to measure the audience on behalf of the advertisers, which overall are the arbiters here. So we've got Brian Fuhrer back on the show. He's the SVP of product strategy and thought leadership at Nielsen. He's here to field my somewhat aggravated questions.
- [04:02]
B
Today.
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A
It's the sports ratings boom. How real is it, really? From the ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is the Town.
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We are here with Brian Fuhrer, who is a product strategy executive at Nielsen and a returning champion guest on the Town. Welcome back, Brian.
- [04:23]
C
Great to be here. Thanks for having me back.
- [04:25]
A
All right, so my BS detector went off full blast when I got the press release from CBS about the Thanksgiving ratings and the 57 million people that watched the Cowboys and the Chiefs on Thanksgiving Day, which they say is a record. And I keep looking at these headlines that we've seen all fall, and they're coming from Nielsen data, and it's one record after another World Series Records, college football records, NFL records. And I want to, like, pull my hair out because the playing ground has fundamentally changed here. You guys are now measuring a hundred percent of the US in out of home ratings, which is up from only two thirds last year. And you've got this big data panel that you use now that it better accounts for audiences than you previously did. So how can all of these outlets be touting these big records when the amount of people that are being measured are totally different?
- [05:35]
C
I agree that there's been some changes and it's.
- [05:37]
A
By the way, great lead. You're admitting it's BS here on the Nielsen Executive ratings are bs. No, Tell us the nuanced answer, please.
- [05:46]
C
Yeah, as much as we'd love to take credit for these huge numbers, when you really look at what underlies it, the actual data is pretty consistent. The one thing that you said that is accurate is the out of home measurement is having a larger contribution than ever before. Because we have expanded our coverage.
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B
Yeah.
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A
A third more people.
- [06:09]
C
But when we look at the contribution that it's giving, it's not as stunning as you might imagine. So definitely a better contribution. And especially. Let's switch back to big data. Objective of big data was to have more reliable, more accurate, not bigger ratings. In fact, it affects different content and different games differently. And sometimes things are up and sometimes things are down. But the objective is for it to be more reliable and consistent. That's the objective. And I think it's delivering on that out of home is giving an advantage. I will admit that. Because it's expanded and there's a multiplier effect there. It's not just sports, but when you look at the whole environment of Thanksgiving and people viewing in communal environments and getting together and watching in this way, it probably contributes even more.
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A
So how much did it contribute? Do you know that? How much the out of home measurement contributed to the ratings for Thanksgiving Day?
- [07:15]
C
Yeah. So for Thanksgiving Day for the Kansas City, Dallas game is about 45%. And that sounds tremendously significant. And it is.
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A
Yeah.
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C
But when we look back last year, it was in the 38% range. So it's not like it went from 10% to 50%.
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A
Okay, so you measured a third more people and it boosted the out of home numbers by 7%.
- [07:43]
C
Yeah, I'm using a game I'm showing.
- [07:46]
A
In on one game on CBS, but that's the late game or the sort of late window game on Thanksgiving. Typically the highest rated game on Thanksgiving.
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C
Sure, sure.
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A
And also two marquee teams that don't play each other very often.
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C
That's the key point. I think we need to make sure we emphasize here is it was lightning in a bottle. Cause all the games were close on Thanksgiving. So the audiences continued to build. It wasn't like, you know, people just turned off the TV because of boring games. Tremendous games and tremendous coverage.
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A
Yeah, Chris Collinsworth can't be bothered to work on Thanksgiving. But that's a whole separate thing for NBC.
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But, but you're right. My family was the same way. We started with the early game. It was close. It led into the other one. And next thing you know, you're watching nine hours of football.
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C
Yeah. And I think the closeness, the matchups, everything that was put together this, this year was just extraordinary. And I think that is really what drove the result more than any kind of methodological changes that we could throw out there.
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A
But they helped. And if this was an anomaly, then I would agree with you. But this is happening over and over and over this fall where we're seeing these headlines of huge raises. I mean, the freaking Thanksgiving Day parade was up 8% on NBC. And Peacock, 34 million people. Is that because they had a wicked performance on the parade? Is it. I mean, how do you account for that?
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C
Well, I'm sure it didn't hurt. But the other thing I really want to point out, and we've been looking closely at this, is if we rewind a few years when they started to simulcast and test different scenarios with putting content out and games out on their streaming platforms, it was just being tested. And what we're seeing now is real legitimate usage and contribution from younger demographics on the streaming platform. It's not just a small number that's, you know, icing on the cake anymore. It's a legitimate platform that people are using.
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A
All right, I want to talk about that because that is potentially a very big deal. Because the knock on subscription streaming has always been that it is an on demand platform and the audience has not transferred over yet for big live events. And what you seem to be saying is that more and more they are doing that. Do you have numbers to show that? Like what percentage of the Macy's Parade audience was coming from Peacock?
- [10:14]
C
I don't have the exact percentage. But what we've been looking at this year over year and what we. What we have seen is a market shift. And here's what's really important. When we look at the audience, it's building, so it's grown year over year over year. And it's a completely different audience. I should say completely, but it's a much younger audience and in a lot of cases, much more female audience on the streaming platforms than on broadcast tv. So they're taking the same content, making it available across different platforms, and consumers are just making a choice. And the streaming platforms are having an increasingly a large contribution here.
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A
So is it because more people are consuming that way, or are you guys just getting better at measuring it?
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C
Well, I think both. We've talked about the increases with, with out of Home and, and we think that was a really important enhancement, particularly for sports, with, with the different markets that were included. But I do think it, it's, it's an, an organic change in how consumers are embracing these platforms. It's not just they're knowing where to go to watch the content now, and maybe they didn't so much before. That's just speculation. But what I can tell you is the audiences are really responding to the streaming platforms in a way they hadn't before.
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A
So if you had to estimate what percentage of the NFL audience is now consuming via these streaming platforms, of the linear broadcast partners, not the Amazon game, not the Netflix Christmas Day games, the traditional broadcasters, and now that they all, with Fox adding Fox one, have streaming platforms, what percentage of the audience is consuming that way?
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C
I'm going to give you an ungratifying answer because I don't.
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A
I'm always ungratified. Come on.
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C
You know that really, we have to go back game by game and network by network on that. I'd rather they gave you those numbers because they hold them closely. What I can tell you is that we're definitely seeing consumers embrace and increase year over year.
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A
But like 5%, 10%, I mean, it used to be like 2 or 3%.
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C
Yeah. What's I think important is it's north of that and it's especially impactful when you look at 18 to 34 and younger demos, that it skews much less 65 plus than, you know, the broadcast networks. And I think that's good for everybody now. You know, it's good for the NFL. They're exposing, you know, their, their content in the games to much younger audiences in ways that they want to consume it.
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A
Yeah, I mean, the reason I sound skeptical here is I just, I know where the incentives are here. And you guys have just come through a few years of people being pretty openly critical of Nielsen. They thought for years that you guys were not capturing enough of the audience, that you were not capturing the bar audience and the birthday party audience and all this stuff. And you've rectified this with the out of home measurement and you've been more precise with the big data panel measurement. But the NFL was still not happy. I mean they said at the beginning of the season, they said we're happy with the steps we've taken forward for 2025, but there's more work to be done. What is the NFL talking about when they say there's more work to be done? Shouldn't they be ecstatic with these ratings this year?
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C
Well, the great thing about this business is there's always more work to be done.
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A
I've been here 40 years now. I'm calling BS on you. What is the NFL talking about?
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C
You know, there's always things that we can and sports is in a lot of ways its own animal. For example, we're working closely with them on some additional initiatives. Don't know that I can talk about them publicly yet. But when you look at the data, for example, sports has, and you know it was, was talked about, public sports has a very high co viewing percentage, probably more than any other, any other content out there. And that they would like us to improve that and we're working to do that. That's just one example.
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A
Okay, so you would be accounting for if Craig has five of his bros over to watch the game. That would be six instead of one viewer.
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C
The only thing I push back on is we do that now, but we can always do better at it.
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A
How do you do that now? How do you know five people are watching Craig's TV two different ways?
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C
We, we have people that wear wearable devices so that if we're going to other people's houses, we're making sure that we know that. And the devices we have in home allow for guests to log in. So that's the other thing. And you know, we can have literally two dozen people logged in at a time. And we work hard with our homes to train them to have, you know, make sure if people are there, hey, press this guest button and tell us, you know, whether you're, what, what your gender is and what your age is. So that, that's, that's how we do.
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B
Is that the same for streaming versus linear, that same technology, like if me and my friends are watching a game on Netflix versus watching on cbs.
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C
So yes, the underpinnings are exactly the same for live streaming sports, live stream, we do a little bit more. We pull in big data as well from the streaming, the first party providers. But the definition or the identification of both the demographics and also the co viewing is exactly the same, by the.
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A
Way, if you're interested in knowing more about the Nielsen process and what they do. We actually did a podcast on this earlier this year from April, so you can look at that pod. But I want to talk specifically about sports here because just getting back to this notion that the NFL is unhappy, that these sports brands are dependent on their TV rights and the TV rights are dependent on the numbers that you guys provide. How do you stand up to a league like the NFL that has such awesome power and can roughshod run anyone around any place at any time and go back to them and say, actually, guys, sorry, you're down 5% in this window.
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C
We do it the same way we do it with, with all clients, large or small. We just try to.
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A
Is that true? We do.
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C
We have to. We have to be now. We certainly have to listen and work with all of our.
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A
And you're doing the things you're doing. You're changing the methodology.
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C
It's not just the NFL. It's the NFL content across all of our clients. So it's, it's not just one client. It's the highest profile content that we report on. So we, and we want to get that right and continue make it, make it better. So I don't think it's purely an NFL question.
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A
And you don't think that it's hard to make comparisons across the years when the methodology changes like this? Like, I, I'll make the analogy to covering box office. You see these box office stories that say, oh, this is the biggest opening since 1987. And you look and you're like, well, wait a second, that's not accounting for inflation. You can say that, but it's not accounting for a key metric. And if you are comparing the numbers this year to the numbers even last year or a few years ago, like, it's just a different playing field. These, these headlines should have asterisks on.
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B
Yeah. Do we basically have to throw out all the info from 2010 to 2022?
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C
I think that the data stands on its own, and I don't know if it's an asterisk, but I do think it is important to make those distinctions where measurement either expanded for coverage or, you know, is. Is more accurate. I think expansions and coverage are different than accuracy because we always want to be as accurate as possible. But audiences have increased. There's no doubt that the product that's being delivered.
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A
So why do you think audiences have increased other than people adopting these new platforms? More Is it that the NFL is suddenly more popular? Is college football more popular? Is the Macy's Parade just more popular?
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C
When you look at the data and you look at the product that's being delivered, I think it's continued. If you watch a game from 20 years ago, 25 years ago, it's a different experience. So the entire environment, I think, has changed.
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A
Yeah, but so has the media fragmentation. There's no monoculture. There's no, there's infinite choices. So isn't it just that you're counting better?
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C
Well, I think we are counting better, but I do think that sports, particularly the NFL, is one thing that defragmentizes the audiences probably more than anything.
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A
You think so? You think?
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C
I do. I do.
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A
Okay. Yeah. I don't know the answer to that. I know some of the behavior I witnessed in my own home where my kid does not watch live sports. He watches highlights on YouTube. But we don't use personal anecdotes here. You are saying that the monoculture is not only maintained for sports, but it has actually increased as all of these choices and platforms have proliferated.
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C
I don't want to discount the use case you, you, you cited. And that's, that is really important. And that's, that's one of the areas we're looking to expand measurement on is, you know, all those clips and, and what's happening in, in, for example, the creator environment, all of that, that they're all, that's all having impact. But I will say the, the content that really does best against and brings a lot of younger viewers back in is sports. It's much more universal, I think, than a lot of other content. And putting it on streaming in ways that younger demos want to consume it helps as well.
- [20:12]
A
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B
Who is watching and are better accounting data than anybody.
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A
Yeah, but, but Nielsen is the brand, Craig. I mean, the reason why they use Nielsen is because advertisers want a outside third party to tell them what the audiences are. If it was just coming from the first party data, yeah, they can do that. They do sell that way. But Nielsen being involved helps.
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B
But is Amazon just telling Nielsen directly what the ratings are or is it like the IRS and your taxes where it's like, we know what you owe us but you have to guess first.
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C
Well, let me answer the question because it's really important and it's, it's the same concept that we're doing with Big Data plus panel. Ingesting content from the cable companies and the set top box data and integrating that. The only reason that they're coming to us is the consistency that the advertisers accept by us taking our panel and we're starting with the panel and we're making the data better with their first party data. It's not that they're shipping across this data and we're just ingesting it and reporting it out. We're using our panel in conjunction with the first party data to make both better. And that's really our objective.
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A
So if yours didn't match theirs, you would call them on it.
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C
We use ours to adjust theirs and also we use theirs to also fill in gaps that might exist.
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A
And what might those gaps be?
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C
I'll give you an example though, that's really important to understand. What we know with our meters is there's one big thing that people don't realize. We know when the set is either turned off or the channel has changed. And a lot of the data that's being streamed out doesn't have that intelligence. That's one of the things that probably one of the most important things that we do with our panel is we adjust when people are not watching. So that's a big thing that we do to improve that data and the.
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A
First party platforms can't do that. Netflix doesn't know. When I'm not watching Netflix, they know what's streamed out.
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C
But if you turn off your TV and your device that is still on, there's a lot, a lot of cases that get missed. Not 100% of the time, but that's a very important adjustment factor that we, we have to put in.
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A
Okay, and you guys are fending off other competitors that have their own methodology, the video amps, the luminates, all of these other systems that claim to have different and they say better formulas. When it comes to sports in particular, how do you guys pitch yourselves as being the most accurate?
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C
Sports is by far the most complicated thing that we measure.
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A
Yeah, because there's no start and end time.
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C
Exactly. So first off, decades and decades of measuring it and having the institutional knowledge of how to put that together is really important here. And we, and knowing how to work with our clients to get that, all of that, those underlying components.
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A
Right.
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C
Is super important. And having, as you know, our meters work on codes, they listen for codes to know exactly what feed is being put out there. Our clients put audio codes into every one of those feeds of every one of those games. And that's how we know who's watching what. It's very complicated and we really relish the responsibility to do that with our clients. And we, we know that the data we have is the most accurate.
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A
Hmm.
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B
My biggest question in all of this, Brian, is the difference between a viewer and a view. And if those things are getting conflated. Now, back in the day, a four person household had one television, so that counted as four people watching one game. If you keep that formula today, when a house has three televisions, does that mean 12 people are watching a game or is it still just four?
- [25:21]
C
It's always just four, because what we know is who is watching on what sets. So if you can have, you know, 20 televisions and five people, then you go from one of the, you they log in, log out. We know you know who's watching each site.
- [25:37]
B
So what happens if I'm at home watching a game with my family of four and I turn the game off and go outside or I keep the game on, I go outside to walk my dog and I then pull up the game on my phone. Does that count as more another person viewing the game or am I still the same person vers on my phone versus watching at home on my, on my couch?
- [25:58]
C
Well, there's a lot, there's a lot of different scenarios.
- [26:00]
B
I Want to.
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C
Want to be sure. We work with a lot of different clients, a lot of different scenarios. If that particular app is measured and, you know, we work with a lot of clients to. To implement Nielsen metering directly into the apps, then, yeah, that would. That would credit in. And that certainly is one of the examples that we have. There are certain scenarios where it wouldn't, but, you know, with sports being the highest profile content, our clients are very anxious to work with us to make sure that that gets measured. And in most cases, it would continue to be.
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B
I'm just. Yeah, I was just curious how much double counting is going on. If I'm switching from my TV to my laptop to my phone.
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C
Yeah.
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A
What if you're watching two games, one on your phone, one on your tv?
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C
In that case, we do have, you know, a winning situation. You. You're the t. If you're logged into your tv, that would credit in.
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A
But would it credit you also watching on your phone?
- [26:51]
C
Not in that case, if. Because we. We know who the person is and we tie it back to the person.
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A
Hmm. Wow. Very complicated.
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C
There's a lot that goes on in the background with. With our. With our panel that. And, you know, that is. That is absolutely the backbone.
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B
Which sport is growing the fastest?
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C
You know, I think the whole MMA area is the area that's growing very quickly.
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A
So you think the Ellisons were smart to pay $7.7 billion to bring UFC to CBS and Paramount plus can't comment on that one. Not commenting is enough. Is baseball up, down? Where are we on baseball?
- [27:30]
C
We've had a really. And we've been looking at the World Series. It was really pretty extraordinary how it really tracked. Baseball's a different sport than football because it's so local up until, you know, the playoffs. So it is different.
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A
But all the metrics, according to you guys, were up on the national games this year. Sunday night baseball was up. The Fox games were up. The World Series was certainly up. I mean, obviously, a game seven going into extra innings probably helps that a lot. And then if you look, I know you guys don't measure it, but if you look at the baseball ratings in Canada and Japan, they put out a number of, like, 50 million people watch the World Series.
- [28:12]
C
Yeah, I think we've been looking and comparing how people are consuming it across, you know, linear and whether they're using VMAPD, like YouTube TV and what those different audiences look like. But obviously, we had a big Asian influx in the US of viewers thanks to Ohtani, and, you know, that's one of the things that had a big impact. It definitely had a great, a great. The games and the closeness and the intensity. It's frankly, it's good for everybody when games are that close.
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A
And especially for baseball when they were in a year, essentially a contract year, where they were negotiating new deals and ESPN had dropped them and it was embarrassing and the whole thing. And I feel like they kind of salvage that by having momentum behind them.
- [28:59]
C
Nothing succeeds like success.
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A
Yeah. All right. Well, appreciate you coming on the show and being grilled by me. Thank you.
- [29:06]
C
Always a pleasure. Hopefully it helps.
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A
We are back with the call sheet. Craig, I don't even need to ask you if you are a Five Nights at Freddy's fan, because when I told you we were doing this, you said, what?
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B
That's not what I said. I said, what are my opinions on Five Nights at Freddy's? I've never seen a movie. I know it was very successful, surprisingly, considering it was day and date when it came out two years ago.
- [29:27]
A
Yeah. This movie opened to $80 million in October and it was also on Peacock. Kind of amazing.
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B
It's a record for day and date.
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A
Releases in theaters and it did almost 300 million worldwide. Now, of course, because nothing can be left alone, we have five nights at Freddy's 2, and the tracking is only about half of that number. It's only about 40 million, according to NRG. A couple have it a little lower than that. A lot of the Blumhouse sequels open lower than the original because people get all excited for something new, but I didn't think it would be this much lower.
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B
Do you chalk that up, too? I mean, the last time Five Nights at Freddy's came out, it was the weekend before Halloween. Now you're kind of. It'll be. It's early December and you're coming off of Zootopia and Wicked and all these big hits that are still in theaters.
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A
Yeah, those are different audiences. I. I think it's fine. I'm going to take the over on this. I just, I got to think that more than half of the audience that showed up for the opening weekend of the first one will be there for this one. Even though this is not typically a big weekend, the weekend after Thanksgiving, people are shopping. They're, you know, fig. Finishing up their work for the year.
- [30:35]
B
Kids are back in school.
- [30:36]
A
It's like, it's, yeah, it's. It's not a big weekend. But they put this movie here thinking that would be, you know, there'd be a hole before the end of the year, and it could play throughout the holidays if it's good. And I think. I think it's gotta do more than.
- [30:49]
B
40, so we're gonna set the line at 40. I know I was inclined to say I wanted to take the under in general, but because this tracking is already at half of what the original was, I feel like I'm a little bit confused now because I kind of want to take the under.
- [31:03]
A
Oh, you do. Interesting. All right. Feel free, man. What a big moment for Josh Hutcherson.
- [31:08]
B
I know he's got I love la.
- [31:09]
A
I love la. And now he's. He's got a franchise with five nights at Freddy's. All right, so you're taking the under on five nights at Freddy's.
- [31:16]
B
I just think that's already a tepid number, which to me suggests that things aren't looking great. So I'm just going to continue that trend and take the under.
- [31:23]
A
It's gone up, though. It was lower than that. It has come up in the past week or so, but we'll see.
- [31:29]
B
Do you find that that always works when things start to trickle up right before the movie comes out? Does that usually mean that the over is coming or no?
- [31:35]
A
I mean, it's one sign. But there are many different tracking services, and a lot of them show conflicting reports sometimes. So it doesn't necessarily mean anything if NRG comes up from where it was.
- [31:48]
B
I feel like I'm playing against a stack deck with you. You don't always share with me your proprietary.
- [31:52]
A
Oh, I do. I try. I try to, but I've been doing this a long time. I know. I have a sense of these things.
- [31:57]
B
You should. You should tout your own picks because you hit it like a 70% clip. That's rare these days.
- [32:03]
A
I should take my talents to Kalshi, is what you're saying.
- [32:05]
B
Yeah.
- [32:06]
A
Yeah. Okay. We'll see. We got to get a. If we get a gambling sponsor for the town, I will happily do gambling picks in the call sheet segment. So fanduel, you know where we are.
- [32:17]
B
Great. They'll get right on that. I bet.
- [32:20]
A
All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Brian Fuhrer, producer Craig Horbeck, artist Jesse Lopez, and I want to thank you. We will see you one more time this week.
- [32:32]
And Doug, here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
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A
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B
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