The following was published by Arkansas Business on Feb 5, 2018
Nielsen, Meet Sorenson: TV Ratings Tools Grow
By Kyle Massey
Nielsen is a fabled name in television ratings history, but in smaller markets like Arkansas, it has long been the technological equivalent of a handwritten letter in the Snapchat age.
Participating households fill out a diary of their viewing habits during ratings periods and mail in their responses.
With newer, more advanced rating tools, KATV News Director Nick Genty can punch up details of what Arkansans are watching second by second, with a level of detail that amazes TV veterans.
His new tools, comScore and Sorenson, are technology-based analytics that offer Little Rock's ABC affiliate much faster results and far wider statistical samples.
Sorenson, a ratings metric that's actually built into smart TVs, gives Genty and his colleagues at the Sinclair-owned station a granular view of their audience in near real time, and a glimpse of their competitors' viewership.
Nielsen in this market is still handwritten, and after the ratings period closes, I have to wait three weeks to get any results, Genty said. And we get like an 8 percent return rate to make programming decisions on. In smaller counties, or even targeted counties, you might get six or 10 books back. So you're making decisions based on 10 people who hand-wrote out what they watched on TV.
Among KATV's competitors, KARK dropped the Nielsen service altogether several years ago; KTHV is still a subscriber. Other TV stations around the country have abandoned Nielsen in recent years, and it's no longer the ratings bible it became after initiating TV analytics in 1950, when Texaco Star Theater on NBC was the most-watched show on the 10 million TV sets in use at that time.
Nielsen reigned for decades, as No. 1 shows like Gunsmoke (1960), Laugh-In (1970), Dallas (1980), Roseanne (1990) and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (2000) ruled the airwaves.
In 2018, however, Nielsen's small-market methods seem increasingly antiquated compared with comScore and Sorenson Media, which collects anonymized data from millions of smart TVs under a deal with Inscape, a subsidiary of the privately held TV maker Vizio. Sinclair is still part of the Nielsen family, but with comScore we have about 120,000 connected homes in the market that provide data largely gathered from satellite dish services and multichannel video programming distributors, said General Manager Mark Rose. We get reliable data about a week later, and two weeks later, the reliability is really strong. How strong? Strong enough to be sellable to advertisers, Genty said.
Sorenson, which had enlisted more than 80 U.S. stations by October 2017, lets Genty and Rose know exactly when viewers tune in and where they're coming from, as well as when they leave and what programming drew them away. You can go second by second, which is kind of daunting, Genty said.
Rose said he can't compare costs among Nielsen, comScore and Sorenson because Sinclair negotiates for the entire group. But KATV is sold on the system, which it has used extensively for about a year. We can show a screen of our newscast and a chart of the Sorenson numbers side by side with a competitor, Rose said. We overlay the data with comScore and Nielsen's market research, and we can look across the street at the reactions our competitors are getting, what's resonating with their viewers, and how the audience is reacting to content. Research is never 100 percent certain, but we can track the numbers and find continuity.
Sorenson's potential in targeted advertising is also immense, Rose said. They continue to expand in this smart television world, and soon broadcasters and marketers will be able to offer advertising with addressable content. So if you're watching the news in Little Rock and your brother is watching in Conway, he may see a Caldwell Toyota spot in Conway while you'll have a Crain Automotive ad running in the same commercial break. From a news standpoint, things like tornado warnings and Amber alerts could be directed at just certain areas, allowing people elsewhere to keep watching their regular programming.
The numbers also help Genty in coaching reporters. If they're telling me they need five minutes to tell a story, I can show them how viewership falls after a couple of minutes, he said.
By any measure, the KATV news team loves ratings, not least because they lead the pack. At 6 a.m., according to November's numbers, KATV's Daybreak had a 22.7 percent share, compared with 17.57 for KTHV and 13.36 for KARK. At 6 p.m., Channel 7's newscast had a 21.1 share to 11.92 for KARK and 10.11 for KTHV.
Those numbers, by the way, are from comScore. KATV stopped citing Nielsen in its news releases in mid-2017.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
The following was published by Arkansas Business on Feb 5, 2018
