The Obsession With Ratings. Warranted Or Not?

(Just a bit of a heads-up, this article contains a lot of the word "ratings"). 

Rating. Rating. Rating. It is a word that you see or hear many times throughout your wrestling fandom but why is that? 

Well, it's interesting to see how your weekly consumption does by the numbers every week. 

However, that conversation can turn the other way. 

The toxic, "logic-filled", gatekeeping way that is (you see why I muted the word "rating" on Twitter?). 

Fans have been talking about TV ratings for years but that discussion has skyrocketed once AEW Dynamite and NXT airs on the same night every week ya know because wrestling fans am I right? 

Before I answer the question of whether the obsession with TV ratings is warranted or not, I'll first have to briefly describe the Nielsen rating (which is an American TV rating system. No sh*t, Omar). 

A Summary Of The History Of The Nielsen Ratings. 

The Nielsen rating system was introduced by Nielsen Media Research founded by a marketing analyst named Arthur C. Niesen in the 1920s. 

It was first implemented and measured for the radio to determine the average audience, cumulative audience and total audience. The scale was then later used for television in the 1950s. 

Keep this in mind, this system isn't flawless.  To my understanding (because I'm not an expert), Nielsen calculates a small sample of people out of the whole population in an area. 

In Nielsen's website, they compared that small sampling to a scientist getting a sample of water from a lake. 

Which, that isn't the most accurate thing in my opinion, as they are different demographics that watch certain programs. 

I think reaching a wider number instead of a small sample will help the accuracy but that's just me. 

Now, you're probably asking, "well, what's the alternative of the Nielsen study?"

Let's read from what Alan Wurtzel (who was a president of research and media development for NBCUniversal and now a senior advisor for NBC) had to say about that in a 2011 Vulture article: 

"Listen, Nielsen is a monopoly. They’re the only game in town. [Their ratings] are the only currency.”

With that out of the way, let's answer the main question. 

Please God, let the conversation about this topic be civil. 

Is the obsession with ratings warranted or better yet, do ratings even matter? 

The answer is yes and no. Ratings do matter to different people in the industry with different sets of skills and expectations *cough, cough TV executives and advertisers*. 

Ratings, however, do not matter to average viewers like us because it really doesn't dictate our overall thoughts on certain episodes. 

That is not to say that you can't be curious about how the entity you consume does in the Nielsen rating. 

Just because a TV show did low numbers, that doesn't mean that it's a horrendous piece of programming and vice versa.


That's how I feel about the topic. Let me know if ratings do matter from an audience perspective or not in the comments below.

Follow me on Twitter @omartheplayaguy and as always, stay safe smarks.