What exactly is Rating?

The term Rating may not be unfamiliar to those who love television and movies. However, understanding what Rating specifically entails, its impact on programs, and how it's calculated remains unclear to many. Let's delve into Rating through the following article.

1. What is Rating?

Rating is a unit that indicates the level of interest, attention, or viewership from all audience members, evaluating the effectiveness of television program content as well as advertising effectiveness. Based on this rating index, television stations and service providers can gauge the relatively accurate response of a community, age group, or specific target audience to their brand's products, thereby improving and adapting to meet market demands and further expanding and developing their market.

Rating index is used to measure the average audience over 1 minute of a program, advertisement, or specific product calculated as a percentage of the population or target group. Typically, the Rating index is expressed as a relative percentage (Rtg %) or absolute number Rtg (000).

2. Understanding the Rating index

A program with a high Rating index means that the program has an audience proportional to the rating index. The simplest way to recognize whether a television program has a high or low rating is to look at the number of advertisements inserted within its content. The denser the advertisements in a program you are watching, the more it indicates that the program is attracting a large audience.

An important question arises: 'Why does a program with more advertisements have a higher rating index?'. Because that rating index has been aggregated and advertised to commercial enterprises. Based on this, producers decide whether to participate in advertising programs or not.

2019 can be considered a successful year for television dramas, particularly for VTV stations. The series 'Coming Home', a national phenomenon in 2019, achieved the highest rating on television. The series averaged a 14.1% rating in the Hanoi market, with early episodes ranging from 6-9% ratings, but later episodes gradually increased, with some reaching up to 21.68%. Visually, viewers can observe fewer advertisements in the early episodes, but as the series progresses, ad frequency intensifies. Despite each episode having a 30-minute runtime, commercials occupy roughly 10 minutes.

3. Calculating the Rating Index

Currently, the Rating Index is calculated using two main methods: digital solution and traditional method. The choice depends on the program content or product segment.

• In the traditional method, stations gather statistics through direct audience surveys, evaluating based on random selection or exclusion formulas based on age, gender, occupation, etc.
• In recent years, digital solutions have been increasingly adopted. To implement this method, a measuring device is directly attached to households' TVs, regardless of region or social class. This device records information as logs on content and viewing duration of preferred programs by households randomly. Thus, accurate evaluations of audience interests can be easily made.

4. Rating Measurement Entities

Who conducts rating measurements is a question of significant interest. Typically, rating evaluations are performed by independent companies specializing in professional survey work. These companies compile data and sell it to media companies or television stations.

One of the prominent entities in this field in Vietnam is TNS, a company with a wide-ranging measurement network in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. This company provides rating data to both large and small media companies, as well as Vietnamese television stations.

In the U.S. market, Nielsen is one of the leading providers of rating data to the media industry and television stations. The company conducts rating measurements by attaching devices for simultaneous data collection and direct surveys. Therefore, the information they provide consistently maintains high quality.

5. The Dual Nature of Ratings

In this era, television programs, generating no revenue from viewers, rely almost entirely on advertising activities. Thus, they still have to rely on the data provided by rating surveyors. However, the issue of inaccuracies in the ratings provided by rating companies is not new. Nonetheless, many television channels and media companies still place confidence in ratings, leading to missteps in program content development strategies, resulting in dire consequences or closures. Therefore, it can be said that ratings are a double-edged sword that needs to be studied and used intelligently to bring about the best effects.

The above article aims to provide readers with useful information to help answer the question: What is Rating? Hopefully, after reading, you will have a more visual and specific understanding of the rating index.