Ratings Ridiculousness

There's something abnormal about ratings in Lexington. They are ridiculously high across the board. Whether that's good or bad, I'm not sure, but right now it makes everyone happy, so I guess that's all that matters.

Our Nielsen Ratings came back for July and the book was one of our best. We one every how but one, which was only one point away and we tied one show, but it was Saturday at 6 and managers don't pay as much attention to ratings on weekends, so it doesn't really count. What we did win, we won by a lot, which does not happen often either.

There are three stations in Lexington, ABC, NBC and CBS. A decade ago, the CBS was the dominate number one. NBC was a far number two and ABC didn't compete. In the past ten years, NBC grew to be a number one. It lasted a short time, then the numbers for the NBC and CBS started to level out. Any given book, each could claim they were "number one" and no one was watching ABC.

Basically, there are two stations splitting all the viewers. I guess that's why the numbers here are higher than most markets. We average low 20s for shares and double digits for ratings. A share is the percentage of TVs that are on and tuned into the newscast. A ratings is the percentage of TVs in the viewing area that are watching. If you look at national numbers, which are done each week for programing, the ratings for the top 10 shows range from seven to four. Our ratings can be twice that.

During July, the 6 a.m. hour of our Sunrise show averaged a 34 share. That means 34 percent of the people who were watching TV when they woke up turned on our news. That's insane! Shows we got used to falling just short of winning, we won for the first time. Needless to say my managers were on cloud nine when we got the numbers back. Unfortunately, it is the July book, which is least important of all the ratings periods.

It makes it hard to question my station's news philosophy when so many people are watching. I love that I work at a place that is so good at being on top of what is happening. If there is news breaking anywhere in the state, 99.9 percent of the time we will know about it and be there. Because that is so often our focus, perspective and substance can fall down on the priority list. I always work hard to keep those in mind, but it can be hard. It's part of the beast of TV news, no matter where you work. It won't be changing, especially here, with such outrageous numbers. If so many people are watching, it's because they like it and if they like it, it won't change. But if I could have one or the other, having the most viewers would definitely come first.

Let's hope come November, the numbers stay as high as they were in July.