More than 500 students gathered in Cameron Indoor Stadium to watch the men's basketball away game against UNC Feb. 7. But to ESPN, the network that aired the match, and its advertisers, the room might as well have been empty.
After all, none of the students present were accounted for in the Nielsen ratings, a system used by networks and advertisers to track television viewership. The ratings record the television-viewing habits of a representative sample of different demographics and determine commercial advertising prices based on these figures. There are so-called "Nielsen households" across the U.S., from the inner-city of Chicago to the outskirts of Appalachia, but not in college dorms.
But that is about to change.
Nielsen Media Research announced Feb. 14 that starting in 2007 it will include college students away from home in its national television ratings. For networks such as MTV, the WB and ESPN, which already target college-aged viewers, the initiative is a welcome change.
"The goal in broadcast television is to capture as many eyeballs as you can," said Dounia Turrill, vice president of research at the WB. "As a network that targets young adults, this is definitely a positive turn for us."
The Nielsen decision was a result of a successful two-year pilot program sponsored by the WB, Turner Broadcasting, CBS, MTV, Fox and ESPN. Nielsen spent the first year of the program installing viewing-measuring devices called people meters on college campuses around the country. The second year was devoted to figuring out how to incorporate these new findings into the overall ratings.
The pilot program discovered that college students living away from home watched an average of 24.3 hours of television per week during the 2004-2005 season. This finding was especially influential in demonstrating the importance of adding this demographic to the national ratings, said David Poltrack, CBS executive vice president.
"Right now, the assumption is that once these young people leave their homes, they stop watching TV, but of course, that's not the case," he said. "This is the first step in capturing the viewing activity of this audience."
Nielsen estimates that including college viewers could increase viewing levels of the 18-24 group by 3 to 12 percent and increase ratings for individual programs by as much as a full point. With more attention cast in the direction of college TV viewers, some speculate networks may develop more programming targeted to this demographic.
CBS' programming will likely be unchanged, said Poltrack. Ratings increases probably won't be large enough to influence large broadcast networks, but may hold more weight with cable channels like Comedy Central or MTV, he said.
While that may be true for primetime hours, ABC Media Representative Jeffrey Lindsey mentioned the possibility of an increase in targeted programming for late-night or daytime slots.
And even if the changes don't create new programs, they might have the potential to save some old favorites, said senior Tony Tompson. "Shows like Arrested Development and Family Guy, which are very popular with college students but seem to often struggle in the ratings game, will have a boost that should keep them on the air longer."
Other students, however, pointed to the rising popularity of non-traditional television viewing habits as taking away from the initiative's impact.
"The fact that Nielsen is now considering college students in their ratings won't really matter long-term since that's not the future of television anyway," said senior Josh Owen.
With the availability of TIVO, Video-On-Demand and internet downloading sites-both network-sanctioned (Apple iTunes) and non-network sanctioned-and the short turnaround time for TV series DVDs, many college students are able to design TV schedules to fit their lives, instead of vice versa.
Sitting and flipping through channels might expose viewers to more new programs, but it's hardly productive, said senior On-Demand subscriber Howard Carolan. "It's worth a couple bucks a month to me to watch the programs I want to watch every time and in an efficient way."
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