Thursday Night, The Biggest Night for Broadcast Television Weighs In On Ratings and Share

Thursday nights are famous for being the biggest night out of the week for broadcast television. Shows fight for spots to air during these prime television viewing hours. Shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and The Office have held these prime-time spots for multiple seasons in a row and continue to rake in top rating and sharing numbers. How do we know this night is the best night for television? Nielsen ratings are measurements of television audience size and composition taken at various times to determine how many and the type of viewers that are tuning in to watch a television program.

Ratings vs. Sharing

                Ratings are determined by the number of households tuned into a program out of the number of total television households. Share is determined by counting the number of households watching a program out of the number of households watching television during a given time. Both numbers are listed as percentages. It is estimated that there are close to 116 million television households in the U.S. meaning that a single rating percentile is equal to 1,160,000 homes watching a show.

Grey’s Anatomy Fights to Keep Top Ratings on Thursday Nights:

                Now on its tenth season, Grey's Anatomy continues to score high in ratings on Thursday nights. This past week the show’s ratings stood at about 4.3 percent and sharing was listed at about 12 percent meaning that 4.3 percent of the households with television access were watching the show on Thursday night and 12 percent of the households watching television during that hour were watching the show.  Based on data collection, that 4.3 percent corresponds to about 5,000,000 television households watching the show. Competition for the show came from CBS’s “Person of Interest,” FOX’s “Glee,” NBC’s hit comedy “The Office,” and the CW’s “The Next.”  By adding up the share percentages we can see that 35% of households watching television during the hour that Grey’s Anatomy aired were watching one of these major broadcast networks.

Television Has Gone Mobile:

                Shortened attention spans have paved the way for the use of cellular devices while watching television. Many viewers are using their mobile device to keep themselves occupied during commercial breaks or lulls in action during their programs. Many other cell phone owners have started using their phones to interact with other viewers watching the same program or to vote for contestants who are competing in a televised program. As mobile phones become more and more sophisticated users may even begin to watch shows straight from their phones.