Ratings: A Runaway Winner

The one-hour prime-time broadcast, which aired at 7 p.m. on July 28, handily won its time period in the July Nielsen ratings in Madison, the country’s 83rd largest television market.

The live program, which involved citizens and elected officials discussing urban sprawl and farmland preservation, was simulcast on WISC-TV, the CBS affiliate, and WHA-TV public television.

It was watched by more viewers than any of the network prime-time shows: TV Nation on Fox, Family Matters on ABC and Unsolved Mysteries on NBC.

Combined, WISC and WHA drew an 11 rating and 25 share in their entire viewing area. That means that 11 percent of all the televisions in about an 11-county area tuned into the program while 25 percent of all the televisions turned on at that time were watching it.

Even more impressive were the results in Madison’s home county, where growth and development are major issues: The program posted a 12 rating and a 31 share. In both metro and designated market area (DMA) ratings, the program, won its time period handily.

“This shows that people really want to watch this stuff,” said Tom Still, associate editor of the Wisconsin State Journal, one of the “We the People” media partners.

But there’s more: The “We the People” week that last week of July was the best week of the month for both WISC and WHA. They more than doubled the rating average for the other three Friday nights of the ratings period.

Perhaps most impressive is the indication that viewers sought out the broadcast. The homes using television (HUT) level for July 28 in the time period was an uncommonly high 43 percent. So people went out of their way to turn on the show. By comparison, the three other Friday nights during the month had HUT levels of 29, 35 and 31. Looking back one year, HUT levels were in the mid-30’s.

WHA executive producer Dave Iverson credited the media partners’ cross-promotion efforts for the viewer response.

“If you had told any of us that we had a public affairs program on land use planning that would be a runaway winner in its time slot, I would have asked, ‘What are you smoking?’ ” he quipped “To me, it was the best we’ve ever done in terms of all being on the same page at the same time, all cross-referencing each other.”