Word: nielsens
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...figures on their desks, then shut their eyes and turned the tallies face down, as if they hoped the whole thing would go away. Like scientists who had discovered that rain also falls up, they could not believe what they were seeing. Last week, however, the two rating services, Nielsen and Arbitron, confirmed their fears: in 1977, for the first time in history, television viewing declined...
...daytime audiences, the numbers were startling. From November 1976 to November 1977, Nielsen put the dropoff at 6.4%-roughly equivalent to the combined populations of Detroit and San Francisco. The Arbitron figures were even more dramatic. From 9 a.m. to noon, they said, viewing was down 11%-or goodbye Chicago. The arithmetic for the prime-time evening hours was less dramatic, but significant nonetheless. Nielsen said the nighttime decline was 3.1%; Arbitron said...
...this diverse country than to watch the highest-rated series on prime-time television. Though network TV is never art and only sporadically satisfying entertainment, it is a fascinating barometer of the public's prevailing tastes in pop culture and social values. That is why the Nielsen winners are often more exciting to watch than better shows with low ratings. Turn on the hits and you get a fun-house mirror image of the nation's psyche. It is a picture that only television can offer...
...similar, but the message they deliver is not. ABC's blockbusters are downright obsessed with two subjects-youth and sex-that were never too important to earlier successful series. Obviously this twin fixation strikes a popular chord-for the Tuesday night hits win every age group in the Nielsen survey. The America they reflect is younger and sassier than the one that once embraced Lucy and Dobie. Happy Days'frantic pace is TV's equivalent of the erotic drive of Top 40 radio...
Becoming a movie star is something different. As such talented TV comics as Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Burnett and Dick Van Dyke have learned, high Nielsen ratings do not necessarily pave the way to a successful film career Television fans don't like to pay good money to see stars they can see at home for free, nor are they fond of watching their favorite performers playing new roles. Winkler is surely aware of these potential pitfalls, but he has nonetheless jumped into the fray. In Heroes, a determinedly high-minded movie, he drops his Fonzie mannerisms to play...