MUMBAI: Nielsen is giving TV viewership a fresh scoreboard with the launch of its revamped weekly ranking reports, now supercharged by Big Data plus Panel measurement.
Unveiled for the first official week of the new broadcast season (starting 22 September), the reports don’t just track traditional programming anymore. Two new lists are in play:Top 25 Live Sports Events and the Top 250 Total Scheduled Programmes across broadcast, cable, streaming and syndication.
Sports wasted no time making a splash in the inaugural rankings, with college football, Major League Baseball, the NFL, Ryder Cup and the WNBA all scoring spots in the Top 25.
The refreshed Nielsen rankers now span broadcast, cable, syndication and streaming, giving a more holistic view of evolving TV habits. The reports shift to total day viewing and cover demographics from households to coveted age brackets like 18–49 and 25–54.
At the heart of this is Nielsen’s Big Data plus Panel system, which blends the company’s long-standing representative panel with viewing data from 45 million households and 75 million devices, including set-top boxes, smart TVs and first-party streaming data. The result? A richer, more precise picture of who’s watching what, when and where.
Beyond advertising, these insights can influence content programming, licensing, and TV distribution deals. Nielsen is also folding the new rankings into its website’s Top 10 lists, while continuing to flex its lead in streaming measurement through tools like streaming content ratings and The Gauge.
With Big Data now in play, Nielsen isn’t just reporting on TV, it’s rewriting the playbook for how viewing is measured.
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