WHY RANKINGS OVER RATINGS?

The final chapter of Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953 lists the Top Ten Programs & Personalities of the Golden Age in five genres - Music, Comedy, Drama, Audience Participation and News/Sports. The programs are listed in order but the scores that determined their order are not revealed. 

In both cases the final standings are determined by a point system based on the Annual Rankings of each program - not the total rating points accumulated by each of them over the years. What’s the difference? Looking at the most popular program category, Comedy, there appears to be very little except for the order of finish:

Here are the Top Ten comedy attractions as determined by the total number of rating points they scored, their rating averages and their ranking points: 

Total Rating Points Scored          Rating Average                      Ranking Points
Jack Benny 498.5  21 seasons     Jack Benny 23.7                     Jack Benny 966
Eddie Cantor 388.9 18 seasons    Edgar Bergen 23.1                  Edgar Bergen 757
Fibber McGee 371.0 18 seasons   Eddie Cantor 21.6                  Fibber McGee 753
Edgar Bergen 370.2 16 seasons   Fibber McGee 20.6                 Amos & Andy 677
Amos & Andy 369.0 21 seasons    Bob Hope 19.8                        Bob Hope 611
Bob Hope 336.3 17 seasons         Red Skelton 18.6                     Eddie Cantor 595
Burns & Allen 308.7 18 seasons    Fred Allen 18.2                        Burns & Allen 574
Fred Allen 290.5 16 seasons         Amos & Andy 17.6                   Fred Allen 552
Red Skelton 204.3 11 seasons      Burns & Allen 17.2                   Fanny Brice 437
Fanny Brice 238.9 16 seasons       Fanny Brice 14.9                     Red Skelton 386

All of these great comedians delivered laughs to millions.  Nevertheless, to determine their relative popularity, the Ranking system is preferred for two reasons.

First - and most obvious - are the differences in methodology used by Crossley, Hooper and Nielsen. Crossley’s CAB ratings based on listener recall interviews were easier to achieve than those earned by Hooper’s telephone coincidental surveys or Nielsen’s mechanical polling.

Secondly, the value of every rating point - one percent of total Radio Households - increased every year proportionate to the increase in Radio Households. For example, Eddie Cantor’s whopping 55.7 Crossley rating of 1932-33 translates to 10,276,650 Homes Listening. That’s just a shade more listeners than Bob Hope’s Hooperating of 32.3, (9,883,800 Homes), in 1942-43

To be more precise, the Homes Listening value of a rating point in 1932-33 equates to only 60.3% of a 1942-43 rating point and just 43.1% of 1952-53 point. This variable invites an “apples & oranges” comparison and invalidates any formula to determine total audience acceptance that involves either accumulated or average rating points.

Instead, the simple point system based upon the annual rankings of each program against its contemporary competition disregards the variables of the methodologies employed or the number of total Radio Households involved.

I’ve often equated broadcast ratings to baseball box scores - a lot of numbers that result in the rankings of the teams and their players both during and at the end of their seasons. However, there’s an important difference:

Baseball box scores are absolute facts resulting from the actions of the performers as witnessed by many others and sometimes confirmed by thousands or millions of observers via radio and television Ratings are different - particularly during many of the 21 years of Radio’s Golden Age covered in Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953. They’re the results of the reported reactions of those who could only claim to have heard the performers with no confirmation that they had.

That’s why rating services always labeled their reports as Audience Estimates - because that’s exactly what they are.

So why has so much weight been given to these estimates since Archibald Crossley first introduced them in 1930? It’s simply because ratings - regardless of the various systems’ methodologies - have been the only means to measure with any degree of accuracy the comparative popularity of programs, stations and networks.  (See Radio's Rulers: Crossley, Hooper & Nielsen.)

Like baseball in the summer, ratings were the only game in town.

So, despite the deficiencies in Crossley’s Next Day Recall system, Hooper’s Telephone Coincidental surveys and Nielsen’s Audimeter polling, the broadcasting and advertising industries needed their reports to track the trends of listeners’ preferences. And when the samplings of bi-weekly reports were accumulated into quarterly and seasonal totals, their trends became obvious and valid beyond the dispute of anyone except the most nit-picking critics of ratings.

                            Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL    Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com