Super Bowl LVI Ratings Comparisons: What is the Truth?

Network spin is nothing new, and nothing I haven't talked about in-depth before - most recently in regards to HBO and "Euphoria." However, there really isn't anything quite like Super Bowl-spin. It being by far the most-watched event of the year, its ratings are reported in basically any and every U.S. news publication you can think of, and this reporting is often lifted directly from the network press release. NBC's press release is actually not bad as it's pretty transparent with the ratings; my only qualm is with the historical comparisons.

Looking at the linear TV viewership, Nielsen reported 99.178 million viewers for the game, and NBC does acknowledge this figure in their release - rounding it to an even 99.2 million. Nielsen also reported, and NBC acknowledges, an additional 1.91 million viewers on Spanish-language network Telemundo. Together, this is a linear TV total of about 101.09 million viewers. All of that is fine. The issue comes with how the streaming audience is integrated into their Total Audience Delivery (TAD) figure.

Euphoria Ratings: Discussion

    I've written extensively on the subject of ratings for streaming services, and in particular, the need for both transparency and 3rd party verification. Netflix has taken solid steps forward in regards to the former with the launch of their weekly top 10 website, and Nielsen has attempted to account for the latter with their weekly SVOD lists. But unfortunately, HBO Max does not regularly release their own data, nor are they accounted for in the weekly Nielsen SVOD lists. So when I see articles like this one from Variety I really start to question it.

    HBO reported that 2.4 million people watched the premiere of 'Euphoria' on Sunday January 9th, a number that apparently includes both live viewership on HBO as well as viewership on HBO Max. Now, this is an interestingly high number considering that only 254,000 people watched the program on HBO on the night of its premiere according to Nielsen data. An additional 86,000 watched its 11:30pm rerun, so that is a linear-TV-total of 340,000. With this, we are expected to believe that nearly 86% of the viewership (~2.06 million) came from HBO Max? It's totally possible that this is true, but we have to look at this number with some skepticism.

How Streaming Can Save Network Television

        The television industry had changed and evolved significantly over the last decade, and most notably due to the rise of streaming. Audiences have more content, channel, and platform options than ever before and as a result, audiences on traditional TV look to be on the decline. Due to this audience fragmentation, Nielsen’s TV ratings no longer provide a holistic view of television audiences, and their new ratings framework, which is said to include comprehensive cross-platform measurement, won’t be available until late 2022 at the earliest. So I wanted to research how declines in the holism of Nielsen ratings have led to industrial shifts in determining programming successes & failures because I want people to understand the symbiotic role that streaming services play in this cultural moment. The key industrial shift here has been the increasingly symbiotic role that streaming platforms are playing in determining renewals and cancellations for network TV programs. First, these platforms serve as a way for long-running broadcast TV programs to find new audiences who then, in turn, begin watching them on linear TV. And second, licensing fees for these programs provide an alternate revenue stream for networks outside of advertising which can incentivize them to renew programs that have become popular on streaming.