ABSTRACT
Ratings and Shares People who sell advertising make a distinction between shares and ratings. One of the best explanations of the diff erence between the two was made by Barry L. Sherman. When doing surveys dealing with what television programs people are watching, researchers distinguish between audience ratings and audience shares. Sherman explains the diff erences in Telecommunications Management: Broadcasting/Cable and the New Technologies (1995, New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 389):
Rating refers to the percentage of people or households in an area tuned to a specifi c station, program, or network. For example, if, in a Nielsen sample of 1000 homes, 250 households were tuned to the ABC network, the rating for ABC during that time period would be (250 div 1000), or 25%. For ease of reporting, the percentage sign is dropped in the ratings book. Share refers to the number of people or households tuned to a particular station program or network correlated with sets in use. Continuing the above example, if only 750 of the sampled households were actually watching television in the time period covered, ABC’s share would be (250 div 750) = 33%. Since there are always more sets in a market than there are sets in use, the share fi gure is always higher than the rating.
