DMA is short for Neilsen Media Research Designated Television Market Area. Television stations and networks are fueled by the advertisement spending by Madison Avenue executives that have never seen the world outside of New York City. Which partly explains how Ventura and Victorville stations can be part of the Los Angeles DMA.
Television research is provided to advertisers about TV housholds in broad catagories.
- How many people watch a given show (rating points)
- How many people bothered to watch a given station anytime during a typical week (circulation)
- Exactly what is the geographic market area that is exclusive to a particular grouping of competitive stations (ADI)
Ratings are very expensive to measure, thus are generally available only for primetime network programming. The mega-bucks spent for advertising space must be justified by having counts of the eyeballs watching. Networks sometimes will even guarantee a specific level of viewership and if a program episode falls short, it usually must compensate by running additional ads somewhere else in the schedule for that sponsor until the eyeball count is reached. This is why programs that are underachievers in the ratings game face quick cancellation. 38 of the top DMA's (ie New York, Los Angeles, Chicago) have sufficient advertising support that they have individually metered ratings each day, and these also include non-network stations/programs.
Circulation and related viewer/station demographics are "measured" for most markets only during the Sweeps. These twice annual contest periods detemine most of the statistics used by both national and regional agencies for selecting which stations to buy advertising on during non-primetime/network hours for the entire rest of the season. This is why stations will do every antic possible to get viewers during the "ratings period" and then later when the advertising money comes in, they display an entirely different attitude towards programming.
Of course all of this grew out the the Golden Age for television, those first two decades (1950 - 1969) when the power of computers had not yet reached every desktop. You could just ask each station what city it served and how many people watched, but rest assured they would count more dead bodies than a Chicago political boss. An answer came from this dilemma in that the US Census was a trustworthy disinterested party, armed with computers which could collect a range of useful and basically indisputable demographics. This data was available for standard metropolitan statistical areas and by counties. However statistical areas are very poorly represented outside of the major urban corridors, so the county became the basic building block to assure a consistant coast-to-coast methodology. Counties have proven also over the years to be a fair means to describe the coverage of television stations whose viewable signals extend far beyond a given city-of-license or even the transmitter grade B (protected) coverage contour.
The Census generated two primary numbers that were of paramount interest to advertisers. First, an accurate count of the number of households. The household represents the basic buying bloc. Dad typically decides on durable goods (ie cars or appliances) and Mom purchases the consumables (ie soap, food, and clothes), but essentially most goods are sold one to a household. Second, the census provided a useable accounting of how many of these households actually had a TV set. In the first 20 years of television, market penetration of TV sets was highly questionable making raw population figures a poor guage of the potential possible from television advertising. Nowadays more households have a TV set than a telephone! but the legacy terminology of TVHH, television households, remains.
TVHH now total 112,800,000 (2007-2008). That's for the US only. While border DMA stations have significant audience in both Canada and Mexico, these count for nothing in the national market analysis. Same for Puerto Rico, American Samoa and other zones outside the 50 states. Canadian and Mexican stations that are significantly viewed in the US do get ratings credit for their US audience share.
Years ago, Arbitron was the leader in television research, and it established television station marketing areas by an unstable system called ADI, supposedly the area of dominate influence. Naturally, this was the system endorsed by the FCC and the terminology continues in government regulations to this day. Arbitron however is gone from the television scene, and former ADI designations are now as obsolete as they were corrupt. The ADI system allowed, for example, all of our Los Angeles stations to take full credit for counties in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas (survey areas) as part of their regular service, yet stations licensed to San Bernardino and Santa Ana (supplimental market) could not count any of Los Angeles County even when their transmitter locations were actually in Los Angeles County. And the ADI survey counties would change every year in a winner-take-all contest that was conducted as a part of the ratings Sweeps. ADI never did apply to either Alaska or Hawaii.
Our modern Nielsen DMA system is a considerable improvement. It includes all 50 states and all counties except for certain parts of Alaska that do not yet have commercial TV. Designations tend to be stable however a number of new markets were created in the ADI-to-DMA transition and consolidation of some smaller markets can be made any year. And the cardinal number ranking of a given market is based on TVHH count which varies with changes in census data. The newest unique market is now DMA #206, with the arrival of commercial television to Juneau Alaska for the 1998-1999 season.
Also gone are the patently unfair supplimental markets. Under DMA rules, if the large market stations can claim surrounding counties as its protected home turf, then they must accept all the corresponding outlying stations as full market partners. For the Los Angeles DMA, it means that stations like KRCA, KFTR and KPXN can seek national advertising and make the legal claim to serve the greater LA market. In this case, these stations actually do have both significant over-the-air coverage and region-wide cable carriage. In fact, KFTR has its transmitter location on Mt Wilson right along side the so-called Los Angeles stations. Both Ventura County and San Bernardino County are forever blocked from having a new network TV station because the network corporate owned LA outlets hold to the Flat Earth theory and can demonstrate, on paper at least, that they effectively cover Ventura and the high desert with TV signals. In actuality high desert viewers are stuck with inferior low power translator relays or pay microwave fed cable fees. Anyone who does build a full-power TV station out there is prohibited from carrying any network programs!! Oh well, KHIZ can show, on paper at least, that the Flat Earth allows its Victorville signal to flood the LA basin and is now free to market as such.
nasaThere are exactly 210 currently defined DMAs containing the 1393 commercial US TV stations, a handful of Canadian/Mexican border TV stations, and 347 non-commerical (PBS) stations. Only 10 VHF and 182 UHF stations nation-wide are not affiliated with any Nielsen recognized network.
some DMAs have more than one network affiliated station (ie 2 NBC outlets).Network (2001-2002 season) primary affiliate stations ABC 217 CBS 213 NBC/NBC 217 FOX 187 WB 171 UPN 83 PAX/NBC 75 UNIVISION 22 TELEMUNDO/NBC 16 some stations have more than one network affiliation, only primary shown. for 2006-7, the WB/UPN will become the nucleus of the CW network, Pax becomes ION, and My network will pick up some of the old WB/UPN that do not convert to CW. Azteca will probably reach network status for ratings.
An "average" DMA is quite deceiving because the top markets (1-100) actually represent 86% of all possible TVHH and get virtually all the national advertising money. The median market (DMA #106) is "Greenville/New Bern/Washington (North Carolina)" has 10 stations, but 3 are non-commerical PBS, 2 are Pax and 2 are Fox, WB is delivered by cable only. The bottom of the list at DMA #210 is Glendive (Montana), with 1 TV station total and serves only 3,900 TVHH. Meanwhile Los Angeles (DMA #2) has 19 commercial and 4 non-commercial TVs for 5,303,490 TVHH. Big markets, while they may have more stations, still deliver more TVHH per active channel and each station can have a greater expectation of advertising revenue. This is a case of where the small fish in big pond has everything over the kingfish in a small DMA, in fact many "national" advertisers only buy in the top 20 markets as this gives almost 50% coverage.
Translator stations were a significant factor in the old ADI sweepstakes wars when any distant county could be captured by an agressive station. Nationwide, 5000 translators help relay television signals from originating stations to fill gaps in covering established markets, but they are not meant to be little soldiers set out to conquor new territories. The most unusually fragmented market currently is Denver (DMA#18), which still has counties in Nevada, Wyoming and Nebraska. In Arbitron years it had included additional counties in Utah, Kansas, South Dakota and Montana.
Additionally DMA does not define the market potential for the 2000+ LPTV (low power TV) stations either. Most broadcast to small population pockets that are on the fringes of real markets. They don't attract national advertising and are not always carried by cable operators even in their home towns, so the idea of carving out an exclusive marketing area for them is not reasonable. People in small population pockets still watch the big city stations and national networks. However with the expansion of network television (ie WB/Pax/UPN) onto 163 LPTV stations and the few LPTV that get measurable viewership, are rated in existing DMAs. Prior to Y2K the viewership of PBS stations was not a factor in setting DMA boundaries either but this has now changed.
DMA boundaries and their included stations are not static. For example, KADY in Oxnard has tried for years to play to the Los Angeles market but because it was more widely watched in the Santa Barbara DMA, Neilsen moved its assignment. One advantage for KADY is it now can get affiliation compensation from UPN for supplying the Santa Barbara DMA, something it could never receive for Los Angeles DMA. Population figures also have a swing in rankings. For 2001-2002 sunbelt DMAs (Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix, Orlando) are moving up the top ranks and industrial DMAs (Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh) are dropping. The biggest change for 2007-2008 was San Francisco lost out its traditional #5 rank to Dallas.
Also with the close-out of the analog television era, the FCC is granting many licenses for stations that previously could not qualify for one. All kinds of superfringe combinations are possible. Several years ago a station in Porterville, KPFX became a network owned affiliate (Paxson), it was so removed from population centers that it was not viewable anywhere except in Porterville. Bud Paxson wanted his station listed in 2 DMAs, both Bakersfield and Fresno (greedy, no?), because being listed is the first step to getting must-carry channels (as in free) on the cable systems. Neilsen informed him that any station can be in only 1 DMA, and since cable watchers in Porterville mostly watched Fresno stations, then that's the only market he could claim. Getting on a major city cable system is important even if no one can watch the over-air signal. For an expanding new network like Pappas' Azteca America (KAZA in Los Angeles) has resorted to building a station in Fort Bragg on the far-north California coast in order to qualify for DMA must-carry in the San Francisco area cable systems.
R-VCR/Larry
DeanKVMD provides television for 29 (give or take) Palms.
In a similar move we now have in the official Los Angeles DMA, KVMD TV31 full-service station licensed to 29 Palms. Full-service does not mean full-power and the microscopic KVMD signal is only 1 hundredth as much as that of normal full-power UHF stations. This is actually good as otherwise it would cause harmful interference with KTLA, which is broadcasting Digital TV to the real Los Angeles market on channel 31. But because it is in the DMA it can claim must-carry on area cable systems. Only problem is, it still has to find a way to get a signal to each cable head-end in order to get the free channel and the cost of microwave relays will be enormous. Speaking of microwaves, AT&T has fallen on hard times (what else is new?) and is now selling off its system of microwave towers built in the 50's which connected America with long distance phone and network television. Television has changed to satellite delivery and phones to fiber making the microwave relays obsolete. A few are still available for sale, sites typically have a thermo-nuclear hardened 1500 ft or larger building, city-size power generator, 1 to 4 acres of fenced/gated land and a nice free-standing 50 to 300 foot high antenna tower. Rumored to sell for about $8000 complete. Much nicer than buying a missile silo. Check for availability at American Tower Corporation.
R-VCR/Larry
DeanThe principal use of DMA designations is to guide placement of national and regional mass media advertising time purchases by New York City ad agencies. Being at the top of the list really does bring more money to those markets, even when airing infomercials. But the effect is not limited to spot sales, and by way of network affiliation, even lonely KXGN in Glendive will cash in on Madison Avenue buying sprees. The attraction of national advertisers is the primary revenue stream for supporting network television. Most networks pay monetary compensation to their affiliated stations as a kind of rent for the use of broadcast time. The "worth" of any given affiliate can be seen as the number of TVHH that it delivers programs to. So DMA boundaries become very important in the calculation used for sharing network profits with local stations. And since the networks own some stations, they try and claim as many TVHH as possible for themseves to avoid paying out the money to others. Really.
Since 1961, Nielsen has rated television programs. Numbers don't lie, the Super Bowl is not so super, it is pretty good but not undefeated. The best Super Bowl was XVI in January 1982, in a game where records are made to be broken, its rating of 49.1% TVHH has not been reached again in nearly 25 years! But three other programs have beat that record, including MASH final episode February 28, 1983, a whopping 60.2%, Dallas November 21, 1980 when we found out who shot JR 53.3%. and Roots episode 8 January 30, 1977 at 51.1%. The 1976 showing of Gone With the Wind both part 1 and 2 whooped the competition at 47.7% and even the 1994 Winter Olympics KO'd the Super Whatzit that year at 48.5%. Monday Night Football is the best regular game but even it can be bested by CSI and Desperate Housewives. ESPN NFL games usually top the cable charts, but second, third, and fourth runner up is Sponge Bob Square Pants. Even Fairly Odd Parents has been known to whip ESPN NFL Prime Time on cable. However advertisers still like the super show, having shelled out $1.7 billion for air-time in the 20 year run 1986-2005. A 30 second spot in 1986 went for a half million, increasing to $2.5 million in 2006.
Nielsen is trying a new twist for 2006-7. It will start rating the commercial breaks instead of the programs, because those are the eyeballs advertisers are paying for. Channel surfers will become a factor in this sport.
One area not measured by ratings are internet movies. Check out HD videos at Danni.com and not be counted.