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Narrative
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Ratings are a measurement of how many viewers are tuning in to a television show. The ratings are used to set advertising rates for television networks, determine the network's schedule, and even the content of the shows. Basically, to a network executive, ratings are everything.
Ratings are usually reported as points and shares. A ratings point is 1% of the market's total amount of households with televisions, meaning that for a national broadcast in the United States a ratings point is equivalent to 1,128,000 households. A share is the percentage of televisions on at the time that were tuned to that program. So a show with a "9.2/15" has 9.2 points (10,377,600 households) and that 15% of all televisions on at the time were tuned to that program. For instance, the farewell episode of M*A*S*H had an astounding 60.2/77. It is possible to get a 0.0 rating and still have viewers. That just means that an insignificant number of the sample households were watching that show.
Besides the number of viewers, ratings companies also record the type of viewer, or demographics. In the US and forty other countries ratings and demographics are compiled by Nielsen Media Research, so sometimes the ratings are referred to as "Nielsens".
Besides automatic meters installed in some homes, the ratings companies will send out diaries to homes and pay people to accurately write down what they watch. These periods are called sweeps, because the diaries used to be sent out to one region of the country and then the next, "sweeping" across the country. (Or, one could argue, this is the period where the networks want to "sweep" as many viewers to their offerings as possible.) More recently, ratings companies have made deals with DVR manufacturers like Tivo to use their DVR viewing statistics.
Not to be confused with Media Classifications.
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