Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Filed in archive IPTV on July 17, 2005

The recent Live 8 concerts reminds us why it is important to dig a little at the television audience numbers. Across the Internet and in some publications, the perception is that the audience watching the concert over the Internet was larger than those who watched on traditional television.

Five million for AOL and just 2.9 million for ABC! "MTV and sister station VH1 had an average viewership of only 2.2 million viewers," the Los Angeles Times said of the channels' "soft ratings."

In a bit of typical post-concert analysis, the Philadelphia Inquirer said, "The Internet left cable in the dust. To put it bluntly, MTV sank and AOL soared."

"It turns out that the ratings [were an] apples-and-oranges comparisons. AOL's 5 million figure was a cumulative number; the average viewership was 175,000 at any one time. " [A distinction that was pointed out on this blog]

"The ABC and MTV numbers in the 2 millions were averages. The networks' cumulative audiences: 16.2 million for ABC's two hours of coverage, and 13.3 million and 9.1 million, respectively, for MTV's and VHI's eight-hour simulcasts. Oh, and AOL's numbers were global, not just U.S."

The analysis above came from Broadcast and Cable.

Still, it is an accomplishment for an Internet audience to even begin to be compared to television. I suspect we will see more of this trend. I recall the lopsided balance in audience sizes when comparing the broadcast to cable during its early years. Today, the aggregate cable audience is larger and still growing.