Nielsen ratings

Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Robert F. Elder and Louis F Woodruff and sold to Nielsen Company, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States. Nielsen Media Research was founded by Arthur C. Nielsen, a market analyst whose career had begun in the 1920s with brand advertising analysis and had expanded into radio market analysis during the 1930s, culminating in Nielsen ratings of radio programming, which was meant to provide statistics as to the markets of radio shows. The first Nielsen ratings for radio programs were released the first week of December 1947. They measured the top 20 programs in four areas: total audience, average audience, cumulative audience and homes per dollar spent for time and talent.

In 1950, Nielsen moved to television, developing a ratings system using the methods he and his company had developed for radio. That method has since become the primary source of audience measurement information in the television industry around the world.

Alpena, Michigan

Alpena /ælˈpiːnə/ is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Alpena County. It is considered to be part of northern Michigan. The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary is located in the city. The population was 10,483 at the 2010 census. The population swells with a large number of visitors in the summer.

Despite its small population, it is by far the largest city in the sparsely populated Northeast Michigan (lower peninsula) area, serving as its commercial and cultural hub. It is considered to be one of the two anchor cities of Northern Michigan, along with Traverse City. The Alpena Regional Medical Center is a federally designated rural regional medical referral center, and is the largest employer in the city.

History

It was originally part of Anomickee County founded in 1840, which in 1843 was changed to Alpena, a pseudo-Native American word — a neologism coined by Henry Schoolcraft, meaning something like "a good partridge country." This was part of a much larger effort to rename a great many of the Michigan counties at the time.

Television ratings

Television ratings may refer to:

Rating

A rating is the evaluation or assessment of something, in terms of quality (as with a critic rating a novel), quantity (as with an athlete being rated by his or her statistics), or some combination of both.

Rating may also refer to:

Nielsen N.V.

Nielsen Holdings N.V. is an American global information and measurement company with headquarters in New York (USA) and Diemen, the Netherlands. Nielsen is active in over 100 countries and employs approximately 40,000 people worldwide. Total revenues were $6.3 billion in 2014.

Company information

Nielsen is a leading global information and measurement company that enables companies to understand consumers and consumer behavior. Nielsen measures and monitors what consumers watch (programming, advertising) and what consumers buy (categories, brands, products) on a global and local basis. The company has a presence in approximately 100 countries spread across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America and Russia.

David L. Calhoun is Nielsen's Executive Chairman and Mitch Barns is Nielsen's Chief Executive Officer. Prior to joining Nielsen in 2006, Dave Calhoun served as Vice Chairman of The General Electric Company and President and Chief Executive Officer of GE Infrastructure, the largest of six GE business units.