Research Guides: Television: Viewership and Ratings

Finding Television Ratings

Nielsen Ratings:

Measure the popularity of American television programs.
Developed by Nielsen Media Research, the ratings are not qualitative evaluations of how much a program is "liked," but, instead, how many many people watched.
In essence, Nielsen ratings help determine the audience size and composition of television programming.

To learn more about how Nielsen collects the data to make the numbers come to life, see:

Other Ratings Sites:

Statista This link opens in a new window
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Statista aggregates data on markets, industry, politics, economics, and population. Users can export datasets in a variety of formats. Sources include trade publications, market and opinion research institutions, government sources, business and economic databases, reference publications, media sources, and scholarly articles. Include Statista's "Global Consumer Survey", which helps marketers understand consumer behavior and brand interaction.
ABI/INFORM This link opens in a new window
In ABI/INFORM Complete, type Nielsen and ratings in separate search boxes to retrieve the charts.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
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Nexis Uni (Formerly LexisNexis Academic Universe) provides access to full-text newspapers (U.S. and some international), news wires, transcripts, and trade journals.
Please clear your browser's cache and cookies before attempting to access this resource.
Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Film & Television Literature Index is a comprehensive index covering the entire spectrum of television and film writing and produced for a broad target audience, from film scholars to general viewers. Subject coverage includes: film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews. Dates of coverage: 1914 to present.
Statistical Insight This link opens in a new window
Statistical Insight provides indexing and abstracts for federal, state, and international statistical publications as well as selected business and professional publications containing statistics. Approximately 20% of the federal statistical publications are available in full text. This resource includes all content from the American Statistics Index (ASI), Statistical Reference Index (SRI), and Index to International Statistics (IIS), including Statistical Datasets. Dates of coverage: 1973 to present.

TV by the Numbers

TV by the Numbers

TVbytheNumbers’ priorities are:

Provide an online warehouse of useful data about the television industry
Provide thoughtful and timely analysis on the data, news, and issues that drive the industry
Make the data easier to understand and absorb both through analysis and charting techniques
Prognosticate on the future
Be a favorite destination of those interested or involved in the data that drives the industry

Television

Finding Television Ratings

Nielsen Ratings:

Other Ratings Sites:

TV by the Numbers

Find Radio Rankings & Ratings