Fox Soccer Channel is paying approximately $7.5 million a year to be rated by Nielsen, a ratings system used to gauge television viewing habits in the United States.
Beginning October 1st, Fox Soccer Channel will be rated by Nielsen for the first time.
“This is a big step for our network,” said David Sternberg, executive vice president and general manager of Fox Soccer Channel. “It will really put us on the map with the advertising community in a way we haven’t been.”
According to Sports Business Journal, Fox Soccer Channel executives hope the ratings numbers will strengthen FSC’s advertising sales efforts, raise its awareness among viewers and increase its value to cable operators.
“It isn’t cheap, but we feel confident we can cover the research costs with higher advertising rates and be included in national advertising buys we’ve been left out of,” Sternberg said.
hopefully the quality of ads improves. one can only watch kick medic so many times.
Being a scientist and not a media-type, Im not really sure what advantage the ratings gives the network, but if it helps the network expand its coverage and continue to be a successful enterprise, than more power to ‘em.
Well Weston I think its something like, up to this point FSC had to tell advertisers that 1 million people were watching there channel. And advertisers were like yeah? Well prove it. FSC had no way to prove it, now with Nielsen rating them, they have hard numbers to show the advertisers.
Ryan is correct. Without ratings, there is no guarantee to give advertisers how many people will view their ad. That is why you see almost all direct-response advertising on FSC now. (With direct response advertising, the advertisers know exactly how their ads do by how many phone cards, hair products, or soccer magazines they sell. In fact, most DR advertising is paid on a net basis — meaning that if the advertiser sells $10,000 in product, FSC will get $5,000 in return. As opposed to regular advertising where FSC says, “we’ll provide you with 45,000 viewers who will see your ad, so pay us $10,000 for that”.
Good move for FSC. Now, maybe, just maybe, they will start showing their live games LIVE, instead of with a 4 minute delay!!!
I would be concerned that the average US Joe just isn’t watching FSC at ANY time during the day…
I mean, are they going to be handing out Nielson sign up cards at soccer clubs/tournaments? Coz those are where their viewers are….bit of a pissing in the wind thing if they expect the viewers of Greys Anatomy and House and late night talk shows to also throw on there that in between ads they watched the thrilling 0-0 between Liverpool and Aston Villa
Perhaps we need to start a petition to get people in the soccer community together to sign up for Nielson so that FSC can have some hits on there…ER my arse…FANZONE becomes #1 rated show ever on THURSDAY nights
I had the luck of doing a Nielsen test a few years ago and 95% of my TV watching at that time was Fox Soccer Channel. After Nielsen received the black book back from me, they must have thought I was nuts or working for FSC.
Cheers,
The Gaffer
or that it was broken
lol
WE NEED HIGH DEFINITION SOCCER BROADCASTS!!!!!
Keep pissing on the sport of football by calling it that, keep doing doing it, friends. Watch what will happen to you.