TELEVIEWS / What the ratings households watched

In a recent column of “Televiews” for the Daily Yomiuri, Wm. Penn wrote:

Scandal (Sundays, 9 p.m., TBS) is the best new drama series on air this quarter. It has a fast-moving, intelligent script by Yumiko Inoue. The dialogue, acting and fashions are great. The lives of the nine principle characters are intricately interwoven. And with just four episodes to go, viewers still have no clear idea how this mystery will end.

The bigger mystery is why the series has plummeted off the Video Research Co. ratings radar. It should be a tough competitor. Yet, it is dangling dangerously near the single-digit ledge and not even in the drama top 10.

Perhaps, the complex and sophisticated Scandal just didn’t appeal to the 6,600 households nationwide that get to decide what TV the nation likes. Yes, Video Research sampling data regularly comes from just 600 homes each in the Kanto, Kansai and Nagoya regions (monitored for two-year periods) and 200 homes each in 24 other regions of the country (monitored for three-year periods).

Tracking TV preferences began in the United States with the Nielsen ratings in 1961. By December, 1962, Japanese TV and advertising companies had created their own version–Video Research.

Detailed information on just how their statistical sampling is done is available in the Internet edition of the company’s very informative TV Rating Guide Book at www.videor.co.jp/rating/wh/index.htm.

Ratings can be the key to the long life or quick disappearance of individual programs. But what can the data also tell us about the networks? How are they sharing the dwindling TV pie and where do their current strengths lie?

For insight, I turned to www.videor.co.jp/data/ ratedata/top10.htm, where Video Research each week makes available the top 10 ratings winners in seven major categories (news, education/information, sports, animation, drama, music and miscellaneous variety).

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