I've been led to understand that both (Radio and TV) get their money from the overall size of their viewing audiences. The bigget the audience, the more money they make. What I don't understand is how do they know how many people are watching or listening to their stations, and how do they convert this into money. :@@:

Anyone here know?

They make money off of advertisements. When more people tune in, they can charge more for the advertisement space.

Big Brother KNOWS what shows you're watching!!

As I inderstand it, the audience size of over-the-air transmissions are determined by the signal loss of the reflected wave, similar to the way early radar works. It's not accurate, but it's what their advertising departments used when they sold time. Neilsen boxes were added as an afterthought to improve accuracy.

Cable and Satellite are more exact, primarily because theyre already in your living room monitoring your every move.

What I don't understand is how do they know how many people are watching or listening to their stations, and how do they convert this into money. :@@:

The good people at A.C. Nielsen have a group of every people in all of the TV markets that report what they watch every day, which Nielsen converts into ratings. I think it might actually be computerized at this point, but I'm not sure. I think for radio it's the Arbitron people, but it's the same idea.

On edit: Wikipedia seems to confirm my basic theory: Nielsen ratings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings)

Thanks :cool:

The good people at A.C. Nielsen have a group of every people in all of the TV markets that report what they watch every day, which Nielsen converts into ratings. I think it might actually be computerized at this point, but I'm not sure. I think for radio it's the Arbitron people, but it's the same idea.

On edit: Wikipedia seems to confirm my basic theory: Nielsen ratings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings)

I'm not sure about TV Nielson's. But my in laws were just part of the radio version. Each person in the household was sent a booklet outlining one week. You would write down the station you were listening too and the time. This even included internet radio services such as launchcast. After one week all the booklets were sent back. So I would suppose the results are then tabulated and that info is what the radio networks use to adjust their rates. Like I said, TV may be more advanced, I'm not really sure.

My mom's doing this thing for Nielsen where she scans everything she buys. I have no idea what they do with that information.