The Nuances of the Nielsen Ratings System

Just did a quick look at the final ratings for Chuck, and this is where the quirkiness of the ratings come into play. A couple of points, and I hope I don't lose you in this:

*WARNING- LOTS OF NUMBERS AHEAD*

The previous low for Chuck this season was 3.04, which got 6.65 million viewers and a 2.5 in the demo. And it got a 3.8/6 household rating/share

This week, Chuck got 6.596 million viewers and a 2.2 in the demo. Household rating/share for this episode was a tiny bit higher- 3.9/6

So what does this mean?

Demos are the most important factor in terms of a show's renewal. But what do they really mean in terms of how many people are watching? Let's provide some hard numbers.

For example, Chuck's latest episode garnered a 2.2. So what does that mean? It means that 2.2% of adults 18-49 are watching Chuck that night. The lastest number I could find from Nielsen is that there are 132 million people in the 18-49 bracket. Just simple multiplication, and you have 2.9 million viewers in the 18-49 for last nights episode.

For households, there are 114.9 million TV households in the U.S. So a 3.9 household means that 3.9% of households are tuning in.

So having said that:

In terms of households, there were actually more households tuning in compared to 3.04, and yet we had less viewers and a much worse demo. Chuck had nearly 115,000 more HH tuning in. So why less viewers? That can be attributed to the fact that the households that were watching had less people in them, thus the lower viewership numbers. Oh btw, Chuck had the same HH number as last week.

Which brings me to my other point: Viewership drop doesn't correspond to demo drop.

Comparing the two lowest rated episodes to date (3.04 and 3.07) Chuck only lost 54,000 viewers. Now that doesn't look to bad of a drop right? But that doesn't really matter much in terms of renewal. In terms of 18-49 demos, Chuck lost a much larger 396,000 viewers  :'(  So how can Chuck lose so much demo and so little in total viewership? That means more <17 year olds and 50+ are watching Chuck then the 18-49 group. While that's great and all, we don't need those viewers  :P What we need is people in the 18-49.

What was the point of all this? No clue  :P If you dig deep into the numbers, the fan base is still mostly intact. It's just different people are tuning in. There's no deep "erosion" in Chuck, except for the demos.