Audience Measurement Quotes

They say 15 million people are watching the show, but what does that mean, you know? It's not until I'm accosted on the street that I understand!

Everyone knows that there are more people watching any given show than is being registered by the Nielsen system.

Technology has changed, and we need to figure out how to improve the archaic way of what makes a hit, or how to determine how many viewers are watching beyond some people with Nielsen boxes in a small percentage of homes in random areas.

It seems like every ten years there's a book that says that poetry used to be popular, and now it's not, but we really have no way of knowing, in terms of relative size of audience and other things, exactly who readers were.

I think that we shouldn't be fixated all the time on the ups and downs of the weekly ratings, of the quarter-hour ratings.

Don't watch Kroll Show if you don't have a Nielsen box. I honestly don't care. Feel free to DVR it and not watch it because that will somehow help my ratings maybe, but honestly I'm talking to the four of you with a Nielsen box. If you have a Nielsen box, like, who are you? Where do you live? How do I find you? You're a unicorn and I don't believe that you exist.

[The Weather Channel] is the most watched cable channel in America. I'll repeat that. It is the most watched cable channel in America. They were worried about the terrorists immobilizing us, and a portion of our countrymen watch weather. 'Kay, you don't get any more immobile than that... unless you're in a goddamn coma. That means you're saying, "I'd go to the window, but it's too far." If you want to know what the weather is you go to a window and stick your hand out and if you want to know what the temperature is you drive by a bank.

It's the ratings, stupid, don't you know? They've got us putting more fuzz and wuzz on the air, cop-show stuff.

18-to-49 can only be part of the story. There are many more metrics.

It's kind of debatable whether or not the advertisement model is effective. Like whether Nielsen works.

The thing that interests me least about the radio business is the radio business. But I've had to learn a little bit about it. It's not rocket science: You get ratings, that's good.

I wondered if Olympus had gone to a commercial break, or if our ratings had been any good.

I would love an upgrade from the Nielsen box; it feels so antiquated to me.

We're just dealing with the kind of warp and woof of television ratings.

Something economically changed. It used to be that you needed 20 million people to watch a TV show for it to be a hit. Now, with just a few million people watching, you're considered very successful, for a lot of these streaming services, or cable channels. Now, that allows people to do much more creatively ambitious work, because it's not lowest common denominator.

We don't know how many people are watching The Grand Tour's - it's a closely guarded secret, we don't even know - the only thing we can do is make a program that we enjoy. And then hope that we're not so unusual that other people won't share our taste.

I don't want to monitor my audience too closely, as that can really drive you crazy.