If one rating point represents 1 percent of TV households, how many households were watching football that evening? How many households were tuned to The Vampire Diaries? (AACSB: Communication; Analytical Reasoning) Nielsen ratings are very important to both advertisers and television programmers because the cost of television advertising time is based on this rating. A show€™s rating is the number of households in Nielsen€™s sample tuned to that program divided by the number of television-owning households€”115 million in the United States. A show€™s share of the viewing audience is the number of households watching that show divided by the number of households using TV at that time. That is, ratings consider all TV-owning households, whereas share considers only those households that actually have the television on at the time. Ratings and share are usually given together. For example, during one evening hour on September 9, 2010, the following ratings/shares were reported for the major broadcastnetworks:

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Network Program Rating/Share NBC Sunday Night Football (played on Thursday) Big Brother 12 Wipeout Bones The Vampire Diaries 3.6/22 CBS ABC FOX The CW 4.6/8 2.9/5 2.03