I hear those guys on MSNBC, FOX News Channel and CNN talk about
"ratings share."  I am not exactly sure what this means but I would
like a site that I could continue to check so that when a cable
program host says that his/her/their program is "winning the time slot
for cable," I could go to a site that would give me the comparison
specifics.  I would like access to see how these cable channel
programs are rated.  Can you point me to a site that shares these
cable ratings?  I could not find it.

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Clarification of Question by schmooz-ga on 26 Sep 2002 15:09 PDT

This is the kind of ratings I mean.  I just copy/pasted this from the
Drudgerport.com page. Is this only available through a subscriber
service even if historical ratings (a week old) would be fine?

FLASH: 'DONAHUE' RATINGS STUCK

[CABLE NEWS RACE WED 9/25/02]

O'REILLY 2.2
HANNITY/COLMES 1.8
LARRY KING 1.3
GRETA 1.2
BRIT 1.2
SHEP 1.1
AARON BROWN .7
CHUNG .5
HARDBALL .4
BANFIELD .3
DONAHUE .3

Since I couldn't find a site that lists cable ratings, I'm not posting
this as an answer. But I do have information for you.

Nielsen Media Research is the company that collects information about
how many people are watching which shows. On their Ratings FAQ page
(http://www.nielsenmedia.com/FAQ/index.html), they explain that they
don't make their ratings readily available to the public because they
don't want to sway the people they are polling.

Instead, they provide the information to advertisers, broadcasters,
and the media.

Also, about ratings and share:
RATING is a measure of what percentage of all TVs are tuned into a
show.
SHARE is a measure of what percentage of all TVs *that are currently
on* are tuned into a show.

Cheers,
nauster-ga

Hi Schmooz,

If a website published all the data, Nielsen wouldn't be able to sell
the information. So the best you will find are subsets of the data. I
found the following online:

TV Insite - Top 10 Cable Programs - Weekly
http://www.tvinsite.com/multichannelnews/index.asp?layout=webzine

Zap2it - Top 15 Cable Programs - Weekly
http://tv.zap2it.com/news/ratings/cable/020915cable.html

Pazsaz - Top 10 Cable Programs - Weekly
http://www.pazsaz.com/topcable.html

Time Warner Cable San Diego
Lots of figures relating to the local market only
http://www.timewarnersd.com/home.htm

To clarify a little more ... cable ratings are based on cable
households only. There are approximately 101 million Households (HH)
with TV's in the US - approximately 77 million are cable & satellite
households so a cable rating of 2.2 means that an average of (2.2% of
77 million people) watched O'Reilly's shows that week and so on down
the list.

Comparing shows is not really apples to apples as there are different
amounts of viewers watching TV at an given time. For instance, a .3
rating at 3 AM in the morning is not so bad - a .3 rating at 2 PM in
the afternoon is not quite as good.

That's where the share issue comes in. Share means your rating ONLY
for the number of people watching TV at that time so again, if you had
a 10 share at 8 PM (during primetime), there are obviously a lot more
TV's on then if you got a 20 share at 3 AM in the morning.

So, you can have a tiny rating (like at 3 AM) since most people are
asleep but a huge share since the people who are up are watching that
show.

Hope that helps.