UPDATE, 17:11: Well, that was quick, more or less.
Nielsen still doesn’t have any Super Bowl LV ratings to report today, but now they have something to say about the unprecedented delay – although not much.
“The Super Bowl numbers are still being processed and verified,” finally said a spokesman for the company that is blushing. “We anticipate that the final exhibition numbers, which will include the Out Of Home (OOH) exhibition, will be available to the media tomorrow. We will update the press and industry accordingly when a final schedule is confirmed. “
Which seems more like a matter of whether we will let you know when we do, but we are not saying why.
Ref calls “lack”.
PREVIOUSLY, 4:21 PM: A lot of history was made in the Super Bowl last night for Tom Brady, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the intermission show The Weeknd, but Nielsen today is making his own story.
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While America waits and awaits the public’s verdict, it seems at this hour that there will be no ratings for the Big Game soon, for the first time.
Literally becoming the new definition of the phrase “You had a job”, the longtime data measurement company has nothing to report on the Buccaneers’ 31-9 victory over former NFL champions, the Kansas City Chiefs , on CBS yesterday. Quick affiliate rankings may be available early in the morning tomorrow, I heard. However, as a well-positioned network source said, “this is an unknown at this point, isn’t it?”
The problem appears to be incorrect metrics that have caused Nielsen to “reprocess” its data. A spreadsheet with classification information was published on Monday, but was quickly recovered. Throughout the day, the networks were informed that the numbers would be arriving, only to be informed that the launch time had been postponed again.
“It seems almost certain that there will be nothing tonight now,” another network executive told Deadline about the delay. Typically, initial numbers not adjusted for nightly ratings are distributed to network customers at around 8:00 am PST. Around that time today, Nielsen made it known that nothing was going down the pipe until at least 11:30 am PST.
On this and the unprecedented general delay in the big TV draw, Nielsen did not respond to Deadline’s requests on the matter. We’ll update if we hear from them or when Super Bowl ratings arrive – whichever comes first.
Even though Nielsen has seen disruptions in obtaining its technical problem data and extreme weather conditions in the past, the company has never suffered a disaster as severe as it is today.
Watched by over 100 million viewers with great attraction in the 18- to 49-year-old population, the Super Bowl has been the biggest TV show year after year for decades.
Like the Oscars and the Emmy, the ratings of the big game are some of the most important information for networks, which alternate their coverage of the Super Bowl and set ad rates. Data that takes on perhaps more significance this year, coming out of an NFL season filled with coronavirus safety protocols, altered schedules due to positive tests and a 10% decline in ratings on average. There is also an increase in the availability of the championship game in streaming, which is slowly but surely attracting more and more fans of the traditional network viewing experience, pandemic or not.
Which is another way of saying, the Super Bowl ratings are really important.