Big changes are coming to Nielsen’s overnight ratings.
Nielsen will begin incorporating out-of-home data into its overnight ratings starting October 3, part of an overhaul that also includes a reduction in the number of markets sampled from 56 to 44, Sports Business Daily reported Monday. Because the changes will render historical comparisons irrelevant, a number of network executives are reportedly planning not to make overnights available this fall.
Though preliminary numbers, overnights generate outsized attention because they are released at 8 AM ET, eight hours ahead of the final nationals. That too is changing, with Nielsen pushing back the release to 1 PM. The three-hour lead time, combined with the data changes, should mean a dramatic reduction in reporting on overnights going forward.
Not unlike exit polls, overnights generally give a good idea of the final results, but are far from foolproof. It is common for overnights to tell a very different story than final nationals. That can be an issue given that they are the first-and most-reported numbers.
It is also the case that, as a measure of viewing in the top 56 markets, overnights skew stronger for events that are concentrated in big cities. The major sports leagues in particular tend to overperform. In the overnights, Games 5 and 6 of the NBA Finals were the highest rated basketball games of the year (13.4 and 13.2), with the Virginia-Texas Tech NCAA Tournament final in third place (12.4). In the final tally, however, it was Virginia-Texas Tech (11.6) topping the NBA games (10.6 and 10.7).
The networks have been souring on overnights for years. During the 2000 NBA Finals, when overnight ratings painted a far rosier picture than did the final nationals, then-NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol voiced his frustrations: “If there’s going to be such a discrepancy between the overnight and the national ratings, why do we have to pay Nielsen for overnights?”
[News from Sports Business Daily 8.21; Ebersol quote via SBD 6.13.00]
