In the TV biz, ratings compiled by the A. C. Nielsen Company are tantamount to word from God. Data on the viewing habits of a select group of 1million Americans are collected from viewer diaries and TV set-top boxes. While Nielsen ratings have always been the subject of debate, one thing's for sure: they don't come free. Networks pay for the data while periodicals are charged subscription fees to publish any Nielsen figures. That's why last year the company began clamping down on non-subscribers providing current Nielsen ratings lists to the Net.
Washington, DC-based Jol Padgett, a 26-year-old software engineer and publisher of Transient Images (a webzine devoted to television and film) wanted to create an alternative ratings system using the Net. Television viewing choices would be gathered from netizens and the data made available to everyone: Internet Television Ratings was born.
Every morning, Padgett's system automatically e-mails a schedule of the previous night's prime-time network programming (including upstarts UPN and WBN-TV) to the 850 or so Internet Television Ratings subscribers. Participants reply to the message by deleting the shows they did not watch that night. A company RatingsBot then processes responses into a viewer rating for each show: the rating is then formatted into a list and a program-schedule grid. There's even demographic information: a breakdown of age, salary, and sex.
How accurate is this? Padgett doesn't profess that his rating system represents what people in America - or on the Net - watch when couched-out in front of their idiot boxes. "The rating system measures only what my subscribers watch," he says.
In some instances, Internet Television and Nielsen produce almost identical figures: NBC's Friends and Paramount's Star Trek: Deep Space Nine have topped both lists. Other times, the systems show inverse results.
For now, Padgett has no commercial plans for Internet TV Ratings - it's still an experiment. But, he says, "If the networks are interested, all they have to do is drop me a line."
Want to make your own TV viewing habits count? E-mail jpadgett@cais.com (with "ratings info" in the subject line) to receive the Internet Television Ratings FAQ. You can check out its latest ratings - updated weekly - at www.cais.com/jpadgett/www/home.html and on Usenet at rec.arts.tv.
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