Nielsen to add online TV viewers to ratings starting this fall

The Nielsen Company, which provides television ratings for both broadcast and cable TV, announced in February that they were adding Internet viewers to their metric this year. While the addition of Internet TV viewers to ratings won't begin in the fall, Nielsen has already raised the estimate of TV households 115.6 million homes. You can read more at http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/08/nielsen-includes-internet-viewers-for-the-first-time/.

Shore's Slant: This is an interesting development in light of WWE's sagging ratings. I have no idea if that 115.6 million number was used this week in ratings, but if it was, it could explain the ratings drop since the rating is merely the percentage of households watching. If the number of total households go up without an increase in viewers, ratings will go down. On the flip side, WWE likes to say they have a number of people watching online that aren't counted, so it will be interesting to see if their numbers improve when the new metric starts.