description of methodology - comscore · pdf filedescription of methodology i ... contents...

Description of Methodology

February 12th, 2018

Description of Methodology i © 2018 comScore Inc. | CONFIDENTIAL – DO NOT DUPLICATE OR TRANSMIT WITHOUT PERMISSION

Contents CHAPTER 1 OVERVIEW ....................................................................................................................................................................... 1

METHODOLOGY OUTLINE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 1 HOUSEHOLD MEASUREMENTS........................................................................................................................................................................ 3 DEMOGRAPHIC MEASUREMENTS .................................................................................................................................................................... 6 VIDEO ON DEMAND (VOD) DATA FOR PRIMETIME PROGRAMMING ...................................................................................................................... 9

CHAPTER 2 IMPORTING DATA .......................................................................................................................................................... 10

TUNE INFORMATION ................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 DVR ACTIV ITY .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 TV SCHEDULES .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 12 SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION .......................................................................................................................................................................... 12 DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION...................................................................................................................................................................... 13

CHAPTER 3 TURNING STB TUNING EVENTS INTO VIEWING ................................................................................................................ 14

OVERLAYING SCHEDULES ON TUNE INFORMATION ............................................................................................................................................ 14 MAPPING TUNES TO NATIONAL AND LOCAL SCHEDULES ..................................................................................................................................... 15 IGNORING TUNES OF LESS THAN ONE MINUTE ................................................................................................................................................ 15 MINIMUM SUMMARIZATION THRESHOLDS ..................................................................................................................................................... 15 OVERLAYING SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION ........................................................................................................................................................ 16 SUMMARIZING THE DATA ............................................................................................................................................................................ 17

CHAPTER 4 PROJECTING VIEWERSHIP ............................................................................................................................................... 18

OVERV IEW ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 PROJECTING TO A MARKET .......................................................................................................................................................................... 19 PROJECTING TO THE NATION ........................................................................................................................................................................ 25 QUANTIFICATION OF DATA ADJUSTMENTS ...................................................................................................................................................... 25

CHAPTER 5 ADJUSTING FOR LIMITATIONS AND BIASES .................................................................................................................... 26

BUILDING TV OFF/STB ON LOGIC ................................................................................................................................................................ 26 APPLYING TV OFF/STB ON LOGIC ................................................................................................................................................................ 27 INCOMPLETE TV VIEWING COLLECTION .......................................................................................................................................................... 29 DEMOGRAPHIC AND GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION (D CALIBRATION) ..................................................................................................................... 31

Description of Methodology ii © 2018 comScore Inc. | CONFIDENTIAL – DO NOT DUPLICATE OR TRANSMIT WITHOUT PERMISSION

OTA VIEWING BEHAV IOR ........................................................................................................................................................................... 35 CABLE VIEWING BEHAVIOR (C CALIBRATION) .................................................................................................................................................. 38 NON-REPORTING STBS (H CALIBRATION) ....................................................................................................................................................... 39 STRATUM NETWORK COVERAGE ................................................................................................................................................................... 42 DATA STABILIZATION ADJUSTMENTS .............................................................................................................................................................. 43

CHAPTER 6 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................................................................... 46

APPENDIX A - CABLE TV MARKET LIST ........................................................................................................................................................... 46 APPENDIX B - TELCO MARKET LIST ................................................................................................................................................................ 48 APPENDIX C - DATA ADJUSTMENT/PROJECTION CALIBRATION UPDATES .............................................................................................................. 49 APPENDIX D - ADDING AND REMOVING STATIONS/NETWORKS TO/FROM SVE/TVE .............................................................................................. 50 APPENDIX E- SET TOP BOX / MVPD REPORTING LIMITATIONS ........................................................................................................................... 52 APPENDIX F - OTHER METHODOLOGICAL NOTES AND MEASUREMENT LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................... 56 APPENDIX G – DEMOGRAPHIC MAPPING OF EXPERIAN CODING ......................................................................................................................... 61

Chapter 1 Overview

Description of Methodology 1 © 2018 comScore Inc. | CONFIDENTIAL – DO NOT DUPLICATE OR TRANSMIT WITHOUT PERMISSION

CHAPTER 1 Overview last update: 02/12/2018

comScore's TV Essentials and StationView Essentials precisely measure and report TV viewership, using second-by-second intelligence from more than 69 million televisions in over 31 million households. TV Essentials provides national measurements across all U.S. television households, while StationView Essentials measures television stations and selected cable networks in all 210 U.S. television markets.

Our projection system takes the viewership from over 31 million households and uses the data to make estimates for TV viewership in the US. This means we receive tuning data from better than one household out of every four households at the national level (this ratio varies by market). Because of the large number of our households contributing tuning data, users are able to make inferences of viewership for substantially smaller population groups than is possible with other current methodologies. This depth of comScore’s reporting provides the marketplace with a level of granularity and stability that is absent from other traditional television measurement services.

By integrating TV viewing information with consumer segmentation systems, syndicated consumer behavioral information, and other transactional sources, comScore empowers stakeholders—agencies, advertisers, and television networks and stations—to direct the right message at the right audience, providing buyers and sellers with a deeper understanding of the true value of their television viewing audience.

Methodology Outline last update: 10/24/2016

TV Essentials and StationView Essentials follow this methodology:

1. Import data.

• tune data

With event-level tune data imported from our MVPD partners, we know which channels were viewed live and when they were viewed.

• DVR activity

With DVR activity from the MVPDs (DISH Network and DIRECTV), we know which programs were recorded, when they were recorded, and when they were viewed on playback. We count only normal speed playback. Things like paused viewing, fast forwarding, and rewinding are not credited as viewing.

Chapter 1 Overview


• Subscriber Information

The MVPDs provide subscriber information, including the ZIP codes where STBs and households (HHs) are located. By matching viewing information with subscriber information, we can derive measurements for specific television markets.

Note: The subscriber information is completely anonymous. It does not include any personally identifiable information (PII) of the MVPD subscribers.

• Plus Stations

We use plus stations when there are two stations with the same affiliation in the same market that also have the same schedule. We will usually report these two stations separately until somebody, generally a client, asks us to combine them. Once the client requests us to create the roll-up station, we generate an impact of combining the viewership under the parent station and then add a “+” to the end of the call sign.

• Demographic Information

We use demographic information for these two purposes:

- To report household measurements, the projection system takes reported tuning information in a market and estimates viewership for the entire market. It uses demographic information to make the reporting households representative of the demographic makeup of the entire market.

- To report demographic measurements, we match our TV viewing information with demographic information from Experian Targeting.

• TV schedules

comScore gathers TV schedules by network feed and by local affiliate. By matching tune information with schedules, we know which live programs were viewed or recorded, and when they were viewed (either live or DVR).

2. Format STB tune data.

Each MVPD’s data comes to us in a different format. Our import process parses each MVPD’s data for tuning information such as channel IDs, timestamps, and other relevant information. Our process then stores the data in a consistent format. The import process also applies our patented TV Off / STB On logic (US Patent Nos. 8,863,166 and 9,009,749) to account for instances where the TV is turned off, but the set-top box (STB) stays on.

3. Summarize data.

Summarizers blend all the imported data to generate pre-defined aggregations of TV viewing information. The information is summarized to report on individual telecasts, markets, and networks for specific days, weeks, and months.

4. Project viewership to full market.

For each of the 210 TV markets, the projection system uses the tuning information that we do have to model the viewing we don’t have in the households that are not included in the MVPD data we collect. The market-based estimates are then rolled up to produce national measurement estimates for the entire United States household universe. The projection process is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4: “Projecting Viewership.” Specific adjustments are explained in Chapter 5: “Adjusting for Limitations and Biases.”

The projection system does the following:

• It projects to the market population in each of the 210 television markets.

Chapter 1 Overview


• For each market, it projects to four types of television household strata:

- Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS)

- Cable Television

- Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) – also referred to as telco

- –Over-The-Air (OTA) households (antenna only – no DBS, cable, or telco as primary viewing in the household)

• For each market, it aggregates the four strata into measurements for the entire market.

• It rolls up the market projections to national measurements.

5. Load the reporting database.

The summarized and projected information is loaded into the reporting database.

6. Calculate and display specific reports.

When a client requests a report, calculations specific to the report are executed and displayed in the client’s Web browser.

The following diagram illustrates this data flow:

Household Measurements last update: 06/30/2017

Household measurements are based on tune data reported by STBs. Tunes are based on the STB ID, channel viewed, time, and date. Basically, a tune occurs when an STB remains tuned to a single telecast for one minute or longer. For all such tunes, the entire tuning duration is included in comScore’s household measurements. Tunes of less than one minute are considered insignificant channel surfing and ignored during the summarization process.

Chapter 1 Overview


Suppose that an STB tunes to the same channel for 10 minutes, with the following results:

# Channel Telecast Tune Start Tune End Time

Duration

1 40 A.M. Show 9:50:30 10:00:00 9:30

2 40 Later Show 10:00:00 10:00:30 :30

Note: Tune data from an STB does not contain the name of a telecast until after schedule information has been applied. The telecast name has been added here to help illustrate how tune data is credited to a network or station.

In the example above:

• By convention, a tune or telecast ends one second before the next tune or telecast begins.

• The single tune of 10 minutes became two tunes because the first telecast ended and the second began.

• The second tune is ignored during the summarization process because it lasts less than one minute.

• Since tunes are based on telecasts, the network (TV Essentials) or station (StationView Essentials) is credited with 9 minutes and 30 seconds instead of the full 10 minutes.

Once tune data has been collected and schedule data has been overlaid, audience measurements are aggregated and projected for various entities (telecasts, series, networks) across various time frames (hour, day, daypart during a given month, and so forth). Our key projected measurements include the following:

• Set-Top Boxes

• Households

• Total Hours Viewed

• Average Audience

• Rating

• Sets in Use (SIU)

• Share

• Average % Viewed

Set-Top Boxes This is the number of unique STBs reporting at least one tune of the entity during the selected time frame.

Households This is the number of unique households (HHs) reporting at least one tune of the entity during the selected time frame.

Total Hours Viewed Total Hours Viewed is the total number of hours the entity was viewed. It is aggregated from all tunes of the entity during the selected time frame. For a household with multiple STBs, we capture all hours viewed within the household, including STBs that watch the same programs and STBs that watch different programs.

Chapter 1 Overview


Average Audience Average Audience is the average number of TVs tuned to an entity throughout the selected time frame. It is calculated by dividing the Total Hours Viewed by the length of the time frame (in hours).

Average Audience = Total Hours Viewed / Time Frame in Hours

With broadcast networks, a telecast run time can vary across markets due to local sporting events and other events that run longer or shorter than originally scheduled. To account for this, the national Average Audience (TVE) is calculated using a weighted average run time for all markets. The weighted average run time is calculated by weighting the telecasts run time by the market’s average audience then averaging the weighted telecast run times for all markets.

Rating Rating is the percentage of all TV households in a selected market (or the nation) that viewed an entity. It is calculated by dividing Average Audience for the entity by the Household Universe Estimate (HH UE) for the selected market (or nation) and multiplying the result by 100.

Rating = (Average Audience [entity] / HH UE) * 100

Sets in Use (SIU) Sets in Use (SIU) is a metric designed to provide the denominator in a comScore TV share calculation, and is defined as the duration-weighted sum of all sets in a given time period that are watching television. SIU is therefore also the sum of reported ratings for that given time period. SIU may be expressed as a percentage (i.e., sum of ratings) or as a gross number (i.e., sum of the average audiences).

Because one household can have more than one set tuned at a time, the SIU can exceed the number of households in a market.

TVE and SVE include viewing from all stations reported by comScore’s MVPD partners – including those that are not reportable in those products – in order to most accurately account for all sets and households that are using television. comScore is unable to account in SIU calculations for stations that are unavailable through the reporting MVPD partners.

Share Share is the Average Audience of an entity, relative to Average Audience across all entities, during the selected time frame. It is calculated by dividing the entity’s Rating by the SIU during the same time frame and multiplying the result by 100.

Share = (Rating / SIU) * 100

An equivalent calculation of Share is:

Share = (Average Audience [entity] / Average Audience [all programming]) * 100

Because Share is derived from SIU and comScore is unable to account for stations that are unavailable through the reporting MVPD partners, viewing to these unavailable stations also cannot be accounted for in the Share calculations for reportable stations and networks.

Average % Viewed Average % Viewed is the percentage of a telecast or series run time that an average viewer watched. It is calculated by dividing the actual Average Audience by the number of actual STBs tuned into a telecast or series and multiplying the result by 100.

Average % Viewed = (actual Average Audience / actual STBs) * 100

Chapter 1 Overview


Demographic Measurements last update: 02/12/2018

To report measurements for households matching specific demographic segments, comScore uses a third-party (Experian) to append demographic detail to its MVPD partner subscriber files through a direct match process. To ensure anonymity, our MVPD partners send Experian their subscriber files directly prior to comScore receiving enhanced demographic detail files. In this process, comScore does not handle any personally identifiable information. The MVPD partners participating in the Experian demographic match process include Charter Communications, Cox Communications, DISH Network, and DIRECTV. These partners represent a sub-set of comScore’s overall MVPD footprint.

The Experian match process enables comScore to link the demographic detail to its TV viewing information at a household level. This means that comScore’s demographics report television viewing by households with the specified demographic segment. For example, the A25-54 demographic segments correspond to households with at least one member (male or female) between the ages of 25 through 54. This demographic matching is performed to report the following metrics:

• Demographic Index • Demographic Average Audience • Demographic Rating • Demographic Share (Demo Rating Grid only)

The specific demographic variables matched by Experian include:

• Education Level • Household Income • # of Adults in Household • Ethnicity/Race (a mapping from Experian Race/Ethnicity coding to comScore categories is provided in Appendix G –

Demographic Mapping of Experian Coding). • Gender • Age • Presence of Children

The Experian match process is conducted annually with the updated demographic information reported in broadcast September each year. The match process takes place several months in advance to provide the lead-time required to prepare the data for release in September. As some matched households stop reporting to comScore due to normal subscriber churn from our MVPD partners, the number of matched households contributing to comScore’s demographic reporting will experience declines over time. These matched household counts are brought back to prior levels, or greater levels if additional households become available, during the next refresh. The average monthly decline of matched households is approximately 2% per month.

A household is considered “matched” if Experian is able to append all three of the following variables: education level, household income, and number of adults in household. That is, a “matched” household will have education level, household income and number of adults in household 100% populated. If Experian was unable to append all three of these characteristics, comScore considers these households as “unmatched” and therefore, eligible for imputation in order to assign the missing demographic information. On a national level, 68.5% of households are matched. On a market level, the percentage of matched homes varies between 57.3% and 77.0%.

Chapter 1 Overview


In addition, due to attrition, the number of reporting households is variable throughout the year. This may impact the percentage of reporting households with demographic information appended compared to the total number of reporting households at any given time. The following table shows the percentage of reporting households with demographic information appended compared to the total number of reporting households for the most current months available. Future updates to this section will include the same comparison for subsequent months until the next demographic update.

Current Year (Starting with September 2017 Refresh)

Homes in Demographic Process

Homes in Demographic Process Reporting

Percent

September 2017 18,335,606 14,877,026 81.1%

October 2017 18,335,606 14,534,759 79.3%

November 2017 18,335,606 14,028,499 76.5%

December 2017 18,335,606 13,784,657 75.2% Prior Year (Starting with

September 2016 Refresh) Homes in

Demographic Process Homes in Demographic

Process Reporting Percent

September 2016 11,674,560 9,300,592 79.7%

October 2016 11,674,560 9,080,589 77.8%

November 2016 11,674,560 8,836,954 75.7%

December 2016 11,674,560 8,646,129 74.1%

January 2017 11,674,560 8,573,171 73.4%

February 2017 11,674,560 8,248,125 70.7%

March 2017 11,674,560 8,085,572 69.3%

April 2017 11,674,560 7,915,414 67.8%

May 2017 11,674,560 7,629,386 65.4%

June 2017 11,674,560 7,430,015 63.6%

July 2017 11,674,560 7,256,409 62.2%

August 2017 11,674,560 6,863,045 58.8%

For matched households that have one or more missing attributes, comScore performs characteristic-level item non-response (INR) imputation to assign all missing variables. Once the INR imputation process is completed, comScore donor-matches the full set of variables to the remaining set of unmatched households – unit non-response (UNR) – according to the “match” definition.

The item non-response imputation rates for each variable are below:

Assignment Rate for Missing Variables

Ethnicity/Race 1.8%

Gender 15.1%

Age 11.6%

Chapter 1 Overview


In the case of presence of children in household, Experian reports presence of children in the home. In this reporting, there is confounding between "No children in household" and "Unknown". To address this circumstance, comScore developed a statistical model to identify homes among this set that are likely to have children. Of the 3,869,674 households, 12.4% were modeled to have presence of children.

Note: Demographic measurements are not available for networks and stations in markets if they are not carried by DISH Network or DIRECTV. This is explained in more detail in Non-DBS Networks and Stations.

Demographic Index The Demographic Index measures the relative viewership of the demographic segment households compared to the viewership in all market households (StationView Essentials) or national households (TV Essentials). Reporting from households with Experian matching are weighted such that key demographic features of the reporting households are consistent with known population levels of the market (StationView Essentials) and the nation (TV Essentials). This process is described further in “Demographic Information.”

Demographic Index = (Demo Weighted Hours Viewed) / Demo Weighted HHs) / (All Demo Weighted Hours Viewed / All Demo Weighted HHs)

If the index is greater than 100, the segment watched the programming at a higher rate than the market or the nation. For example, an index of 120 means that the average segment household watched 20% more of the programming than the average household. If the index is less than 100, the segment watched at a lesser rate.

Cable Networks in StationView Essentials

Demographic indices for cable networks in SVE are calculated at the market level for the Top 50 markets. The Top 50 markets are defined by market size based on television-viewing household universe estimates. Demographic indices for cable networks in SVE for the remaining markets are calculated by region.

Demographic Average Audience The Demographic Average Audience is the Average Audience among only the segment households in the market or nation.

Demographic Average Audience = (Household Rating * Demographic Index * Demographic HH UE) / 100

For segment groups where a household can belong to one and only one segment, the Demographic Average Audience numbers are normalized, such that they add up to the household Average Audience.

These segment groups include: • Race/Ethnicity • Household Income

Within the Household Composition group, two sets of segments are normalized: • [Children Present in HH | Children Not Present in HH] • [One Child in HH | Two Children in HH | Three Children in HH | Four or More Children in HH]

Demographic Rating The Demographic Rating is the Rating among only the segment households in the selected market or nation.

Demographic Rating = (Demographic Average Audience / Demographic HH UE) * 100

Chapter 1 Overview


Demographic Share One StationView Essentials report, Demo Rating Grid, also reports a Demographic Share measurement. Demographic Share is the station’s share among only the segment households in the market for a given 15-minute interval.

Demographic Share = (Average Segment Audience [Station] / Average Segment Audience [All Programming]) * 100

Video on Demand (VOD) Data for Primetime Programming last update: 02/12/2018

comScore includes Video on Demand (VOD) data for Primetime programming for time-shifted reporting on the Program and Network Average Reports in TV Essentials. Live+DVR+VOD metrics are available for:

• Household-level Rating and Average Audience for Same Day, 3 Day, 7 Day, and 15 Day • Household level C3, C7, and C15 Rating and Average Audience • Demographic Rating, Average Audience, and Index for Same Day, 3 Day, 7 Day, and 15 Day for core comScore

demographics • Demographic C3, C7, and C15 Rating, Average Audience, and Index for core comScore demographics

For VOD viewing to be reported in TVE, it must meet the following criteria:

• Networks participating in the comScore transparency agreement (the current list of networks is provided in Appendix F - Other Methodological Notes and Measurement Limitations)

• National programming only • New (not repeat) telecasts • FOD transactions (free VOD programs) • U.S. transactions • No adult programming • Primetime programming • Please note that at this time, news and sports programming are excluded.

Chapter 2 Importing Data


CHAPTER 2 Importing Data last update: 10/24/2016

comScore imports the following data:

• tune information • DVR activity • TV schedules • subscriber information • STB information • demographic information

The following sections provide additional details.

Tune Information last update: 02/12/2018

With event-level tune information imported from MVPD partners, we know which channels were viewed and when they were viewed.

comScore gathers tune information from MVPD partners in each of the 210 U.S. television markets. comScore’s current MVPD partners are:

• Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS):

• DISH Network - 210 markets • DIRECTV - 210 markets

• Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) / Telco:

• AT&T's U-verse Digital TV – 63 markets (listed in Appendix B - Telco Market List)

• Cable:

• Charter Communications, Inc. - 114 markets (listed in Appendix A - Cable TV Market List) • Cox Communications - 25 markets (listed in Appendix A - Cable TV Market List)

Note: Due to reporting limitations in Cox STB data, comScore excludes all reporting from Cox DVR-capable STBs.

Complete tune information for a given day may take up to 12 days to accumulate. We adjust the information for days with incomplete TV viewing and provide guidance within the system for when information is complete. For more information, see “Incomplete TV Viewing Collection.”

Tune information comprises events that occur on set-top boxes (STBs). The most basic tune information includes:

• a unique STB identifier • the channel, stream, or other unique identifiers for content that the viewer selects • the date and time that the viewer tunes to the channel (tune start) • the date and time that the viewer tunes away from the channel (tune end)



Below is an example of basic tune information for 30 minutes on STB 1001. This example merely illustrates basic tune information, and it is not intended to identify every facet of tune information that comScore collects.

# STB ID Household ID Tune Start Tune End Channel

1 1001 5010 2011-03-01 8:50:00 2011-03-01 10:14:59 40

2 1001 5010 2011-03-01 10:15:00 2011-03-01 10:15:29 41

3 1001 5010 2011-03-01 10:15:30 2011-03-01 10:20:00 10

Note: STB and household IDs are completely anonymous and do not provide any means to specifically identify MVPD subscribers.

Notice that line 2 shows a tune of 30 seconds. Tunes of less than one minute are ignored, when the information is summarized into the reporting database (explained in “Ignoring Tunes of Less Than One Minute”).

DVR Activity last update: 10/24/2016

With DVR activity, we know which programs were recorded, when they were recorded, and when they were viewed on playback.

We collect the DVR activity along with the live tune information that our MVPD partners supply. We use DISH Network and DIRECTV DVR data to estimate DVR activity for all households.

DVR activity includes elements such as:

• time when a program was recorded • time when the recorded program was viewed • identification of content that was recorded

• play, fast-forward, pause, rewind, and so forth

With DVR activity, TV Essentials and StationView Essentials can report measurements such as DVR ratings and Live plus DVR ratings. The measurements are available for the following DVR playback time shifts:

• Same Day • 1 Day • 2 Days • 3 Days • 7 Days • 15 Days

The following rules apply to DVR activity:

• Only normal-speed playback counts as viewing. Fast-forward, pause, and rewind are not counted towards viewing (these elements are used to determine the end of each playback event).

• As with live tune information, playback of less than one minute is ignored. • Playback that occurs within 25 seconds of the live airing counts as live viewing. Playback occurring more than 25 seconds

after live counts as DVR. • DVR playback more than 14 days after the record date is ignored.

• DVR playback is capped at six hours of continuous, uninterrupted DVR viewing at normal speed. (Due to DVR playback being interrupted by pause, fast-forward, and rewind events, most playback events are much shorter than six hours.)



TV Schedules last update: 10/24/2016

comScore gathers TV schedules by network feed and by local affiliate. By matching tune information with TV schedules, we know which live programs were viewed and when they were viewed.

comScore's initial source of programming schedules is FYI Television, Inc. We receive FYI schedules one week in advance of telecast airings. (Each night, we receive a schedule batch for the next seven days.) A team of comScore Schedule Coordinators validate affiliate-provided schedules, as well as schedules obtained from other third-party sources against the FYI data to ensure accuracy.

Although FYI does not provide schedule adjustments after telecasts air, comScore can update schedules for up to five days after the air date. For example, schedules are often changed for program preemptions or live programming, such as sporting events, award shows, and other special telecasts that overrun their originally scheduled time.

Schedule information includes:

• the telecasts that run on the various channels (including program titles, telecast IDs, and series IDs) • start and end times for the telecasts • meta-data for the telecasts, such as genre, original air date, and so forth

The following shows an example of schedule information for channel 40 we would receive from FYI:

# Market Channel Program Telecast Start Telecast End

1 Metropolis 40 A.M. Show 2011-03-01 8:00:00 2011-03-01 9:59:59

2 Metropolis 40 Later Show 2011-03-01 10:00:00 2011-03-01 10:59:59

Subscriber Information last update: 10/24/2016

Our MVPD partners provide anonymous subscriber information, including the ZIP codes where STBs and households (HHs) are located. By matching tune information with subscriber information, we can derive measurements for specific television markets.

MVPDs deliver a minimum of the following subscriber information:

# STB ID Household ID ZIP Code

1 1001 5010 70001

2 1002 5010 70001

3 1003 5020 70002

4 1004 5030 70002

Note: Subscriber information such as STB IDs and Household IDs is completely anonymous and does not provide any personally identifiable information for the MVPDs’ individual subscribers.



Demographic Information last update: 02/12/2018

comScore collects demographic information for two purposes:

• to project household ratings • to project demographic ratings

Household Ratings The system uses reported viewing information in a market to estimate viewership for the entire market (and ultimately for the entire U.S. TV household universe).

Estimating viewership from reported information is explained in Chapter 4: “Projecting Viewership.” comScore uses demographic information to make the projections from households that report viewing information representative of the demographic makeup of the entire market. We obtain the demographic household universe estimates from Devonshire Associates, Ltd. and from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample. These Devonshire universe estimates are normalized to the market-level universe estimates used by TV Essentials and StationView Essentials.

The projection system weights the reporting households for these demographic characteristics to project for total audience: • African-American heads of households • Hispanic heads of households • presence of children • household income

Demographic Ratings To measure viewing among households with specific demographic segments, we match our TV viewing information with Experian demographic characteristics. We anonymously match the households in Experian to the comScore reporting households. We use data from Charter Communications, Cox Communications, DISH Network, and DIRECTV for demographic matching.

To make the reporting household demographics representative of the national demographics, TV Essentials weights by: • ethnicity • income • number in household / presence of children • region To make the comScore reporting household demographics representative of the market demographics, StationView Essentials weights them by these key demographic characteristics:

• ethnicity • income • number in household / presence of children For standard demographic segments (such as Race/Ethnicity) where we are able to estimate the universe, the system provides the following measurements by demographic segment: Index, Average Audience, and Rating. For lifestyle segments (such as Interests) where we are not able to estimate the universe, the system provides only an Index.

Chapter 3 Turning STB Tuning Events into Viewing


CHAPTER 3 Turning STB Tuning Events into Viewing last update: 04/15/2016

We use a process called summarization to blend repository data into pre-defined collections of viewing information that is summarized by telecast, market, network, and so forth. The example in the following sections shows how this summarization process produces a telecast-based report.

Overlaying Schedules on Tune Information last update: 11/24/2015

Suppose that you have the following tune information, which shows the channels that the STB viewed.

# STB ID Tune Start Tune End Channel

1 1001 2011-03-01 8:50:00 2011-03-01 10:14:59 40

2 1001 2011-03-01 10:15:00 2011-03-01 10:15:29 41

3 1001 2011-03-01 10:15:30 2011-03-01 10:20:00 10

Next, suppose that you have the following schedules for channels 40, 41, and 10:

# Market Channel Program Telecast Start Telecast End

1 Metropolis 40 A.M. Show 2011-03-01 8:00:00 2011-03-01 9:59:59

2 Metropolis 40 Later Show 2011-03-01 10:00:00 2011-03-01 10:59:59

3 Metropolis 41 Rose City 2011-03-01 10:00:00 2011-03-01 10:59:59

4 Metropolis 10 Big Apple 2011-03-01 10:00:00 2011-03-01 11:59:59

With the schedule overlaid on the tunes, the channel can be replaced with the telecast that the MVPD aired:

# STB ID Tune Start Tune End Telecast

1 1001 2011-03-01 8:50:00 2011-03-01 9:59:59 A.M. Show

2 1001 2011-03-01 10:00:00 2011-03-01 10:14:59 Later Show

3 1001 2011-03-01 10:15:00 2011-03-01 10:15:29 Rose City

4 1001 2011-03-01 10:15:30 2011-03-01 10:20:00 Big Apple

Notice channel view 1 becomes telecast views 1 and 2, because the channel view spans two separate telecasts.

Note: MVPDs report High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition (SD) programming as separate feeds. Beginning in September 2015, comScore began combining these feeds and reporting HD and SD viewing as a single channel. The individual HD and SD feeds for these networks are still reported separately for months prior to September 2015.



Mapping Tunes to National and Local Schedules The system maps tune events to schedule data using the following rules:

• For national programs on cable networks, the system maps each tune to the national air time for the Eastern time zone for East feeds and the Pacific time zone for West feeds. We also assume programming on the West feed is the same as the East feed shifted by three hours.

• For national broadcasts on network affiliates (such as prime time shows), the system uses the local time.

• For local broadcasts on network affiliates (such as local news), the system uses the air time in that station’s time zone.

• For syndicated airings (such as a nationally syndicated soap opera), the system uses the most prevalent air time listed for the show. For example, suppose a soap opera has a national air time of 12:30 PM. At the various affiliates, it aired at: • 4:00 PM on 152 stations • at 4:30 PM on 164 stations. • at various other times on 97 other stations The system would assign an air time of 4:30 PM for the program.

Ignoring Tunes of Less Than One Minute last update: 12/05/2012

The following version of the telecast view adds a calculated column, Tune Duration, which equals the duration the telecast was viewed.

# STB ID Tune Start Tune End Tune Duration Telecast

1 1001 2011-03-01 8:50:00 2011-03-01 9:59:59 1:10:00 A.M. Show

2 1001 2011-03-01 10:00:00 2011-03-01 10:14:59 15:00 Later Show

3 1001 2011-03-01 10:15:00 2011-03-01 10:15:29 :30 Rose City

4 1001 2011-03-01 10:15:30 2011-03-01 10:20:00 4:31 Big Apple

Notice row 3. Tunes of less than one minute are considered insignificant channel surfing, and the summarizer ignores them, as the following table shows:

# STB ID Tune Duration Telecast

1 1001 1:10:00 A.M. Show

2 1001 15:00 Later Show

3 1001 4:31 Big Apple

Minimum Summarization Thresholds last update: 04/15/2016

For market-level reporting in StationView Essentials, all tunes of one minute or longer are summarized. At a national level, a telecast must have viewing from a minimum of five households before it will be summarized and reported in TV Essentials.



Overlaying Subscriber Information last update: 12/05/2012

MVPDs deliver a minimum of the following subscriber information:


1 1001 5010 70001

2 1002 7015 70002

3 1003 9005 70001

4 1004 5030 70002

5 1005 5030 70002

Note: STB IDs and Household IDs are completely anonymous and do not provide any identifiable information of the MVPD subscribers.

Now the tune information example includes household and ZIP code information:


Tune Duration Telecast

1 1001 5010 70001 1:10:00 A.M. Show

2 1001 5010 70001 15:00 Later Show

3 1001 5010 70001 4:31 Big Apple

4 1002 7015 70002 1:15:00 A.M. Show

5 1002 7015 70002 10:45 Rose City

6 1003 9005 70001 5:00 A.M. Show

7 1004 5030 70002 45:00 A.M. Show

8 1005 5030 70002 1:50:00 A.M. Show

Notice rows 7 and 8. In one household, two separate STBs watched the same telecast, the A.M. Show. For a household with multiple STBs, we capture all hours viewed within the household, including STBs that watch the same telecast at the same time and STBs that watch different telecasts at the same time.



Summarizing the Data last update: 10/24/2016

A summarizer can take the information in the previous table and calculate some basic telecast viewing information within a ZIP code. Hours viewed, number of viewing households, and number of viewing STBs are some of the basic building blocks in the comScore measurements:

# ZIP Code Telecast Date Hours Viewed Viewing

Households Viewing

STBs

1 70001 A.M. Show 2011-03-01 1:15:00 2 2

2 70001 Later Show 2011-03-01 15:00 1 1

3 70001 Big Apple 2011-03-01 4:31 1 1

4 70002 A.M. Show 2011-03-01 3:50:00 2 3

5 70002 Rose City 2011-03-01 10:45 1 1

In row 4, notice 3 STBs viewing the A.M Show, but only 2 HHs viewing. This happened because household 5030 had two STBs tuned to the same telecast.

Finally, the telecast viewing information is summarized by market:

# Market Telecast Date Hours Viewed Viewing Households

Viewing STBs

1 Metropolis A.M. Show 2011-03-01 5:05:00 4 5

2 Metropolis Later Show 2011-03-01 15:00 1 1

3 Metropolis Big Apple 2011-03-01 4:31 1 1

5 Metropolis Rose City 2011-03-01 10:45 1 1

Extending this example, you see how the summarizers can build many valuable perspectives of the information by: • summarizing the information for various time frames: hours, dayparts, days, weeks, and months • aggregating telecast viewership for all episodes of a series to generate series-level measurements • integrating the TV viewing information with Experian demographic information to measure viewing among

specific demographic targets.

Chapter 4 Projecting Viewership


CHAPTER 4 Projecting Viewership Overview last update: 10/24/2016

This chapter explains how comScore takes reported tuning from MVPD partners in each television market, projects total viewing for all households in each market, and projects viewing for the entire United States.

comScore gathers tuning information from MVPD partners in each of the 210 U.S. television market areas. comScore’s current MVPD partners are:

• DISH Network • DIRECTV • AT&T's U-verse Digital TV • Charter Communications, Inc. • Cox Communications We collect tuning information from reporting households in three of the four television strata: • cable television • direct broadcast satellite (DBS) • Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), also referred to as telco

Note: By definition, comScore considers the telco stratum to consist solely of AT&T.

The fourth stratum is over-the-air (OTA) households. comScore considers the OTA stratum to consist solely of households that use an antenna as their only means of viewing live television and do not report any viewing by an STB. comScore’s system does not account for the OTA viewing that may occur in cable, DBS, and telco households.

For each of the 210 TV markets, the projection system uses the information that we do have to model the viewing households that we do not have, while correcting for potential differences between the reporting households and the rest of the market.

StationView Essentials projects viewing to each of the national markets. TV Essentials then rolls up the 210 markets to produce national measurements.



Projecting to a Market last update: 06/30/2017

comScore uses live and DVR viewing metrics to project to the market population in each of the 210 television markets. For each market, the projection system:

• Calculates a market’s television households • Projects DBS viewing • Projects cable viewing • Projects OTA viewing • Projects telco viewing • Aggregates projections across the four strata The various projections made to each stratum are illustrated below:

Each calibration is explained in more detail in Chapter 5: “Adjusting for Limitations and Biases.”



Calculating a Market’s Television Households Before we can project tune information for the four household strata to the market population in each of the 210 television markets, we must first estimate the strata universes. We begin with the television market household population as reported by the Nielsen Company. By combining this information with subscriber populations from our MVPD partners and third-party estimates (described below), we estimate the number of television households that fall into each stratum (DBS, cable, OTA, and telco), including the related DVR market share. The number of television households that fall into each stratum is updated annually.

comScore obtains the number of DBS, cable, telco, and OTA television households in a given market from various sources for this purpose.

• The number of DBS households in a market is based on the subscriber populations we receive from DISH Network and DIRECTV.

• The number of telco households in a market (if a market has telco households) is based on the subscriber populations we receive from AT&T.

• The number of OTA households in a market is obtained from SNL Kagan.

• The number of cable households in a market is determined by subtracting the total number of households for the other three strata from the market’s total television household population reported by Nielsen. That is, a market’s cable HHs = total market HHs (Nielsen) - DBS HHs - telco HHs - OTA HHs. This ensures the sum of all four strata equals the television market household universe as defined by Nielsen.

To estimate DVR market share, we combine other industry-reported estimates with the data from our MVPD partners, SNL Kagan, and the Leichtman Research Group to arrive at an overall estimate for each market.

Projecting DBS To project DBS, the system uses tuning reported by DBS households (DISH Network and DIRECTV):



To project the DBS viewing for a market, the system makes the following adjustments to the reported tuning data:

Adjustment Calibration Description

Demographic and geographic distribution

D Used to account for the variance between the demographic and geographic distribution of reporting households and market households. For a more detailed explanation of this adjustment, see Demographic and Geographic Distribution (D Calibration).

Non-reporting STBs H Used to account for viewership in households with multiple STBs where not all STBs report viewing data. For a more detailed explanation of this adjustment, see Non-reporting STBs (H Calibration).

Network coverage Used to account for the difference between a reporting MVPD partner’s network coverage and the projected stratum’s network coverage. For a more detailed explanation of this adjustment, see Stratum Network Coverage.

Projecting Cable For cable households, the projection system uses household tuning from all MVPD partners present in the market.

• For markets where we collect cable tuning, the system uses the available cable viewing information, as well as reporting DBS and (if available) telco viewing, modeled as cable viewing, to maximize the available viewing data. The model must account for reporting DBS and telco households watching networks at different rates than reporting cable households. To do this, the system reapportions the reported viewing of each network to match viewing levels of the cable households in the market.

• For markets where we do not collect cable tuning, the system models it from reporting DBS and (if available) telco viewing.

The model must account for reporting DBS and telco households watching networks at different rates than reporting cable households. To do this, the system reapportions the reported viewing of each network to match the viewing levels of the cable households from which we collect viewing in other markets.

• In both cases, the result is scaled to reflect the number of cable households in the market.



To project cable viewing for a market, the system makes the following adjustments to the reported viewing data:




Cable viewing behavior C Used to account for network viewership by cable subscribers compared to other reporting households. For a more detailed explanation of this adjustment, see Cable Viewing Behavior (C Calibration).


Network coverage Used to account for the difference between a reporting MVPD partner’s network coverage and the projected stratum’s network coverage. For a more detailed explanation of this adjustment, see Stratum Network Coverage.

Projecting OTA comScore considers the OTA stratum to consist solely of households that use an antenna as their only means of viewing live television and do not report any viewing by a STB. For instance, if a cable household has a TV connected to an antenna in addition to TVs connected to STBs, comScore’s system does not account for the OTA viewing that may occur in that household. For OTA, the projection system uses household viewing from all MVPD partners present in the market:



To project OTA viewing for a market, the system makes the following adjustments to the reported viewing data:




OTA household viewing levels F1 Used to account for differences in total household-level viewership by OTA households compared to reporting MVPD households. For a more detailed explanation of this adjustment, see OTA Household Viewing Levels (F1 Calibration).

Only broadcast network viewing F2 Used to ascribe all reported viewing - for both cable and broadcast - to broadcast stations only. For a more detailed explanation of this adjustment, see Access Only to Broadcast Networks (F2 Calibration).

Broadcast network viewing proportion adjustments

G Used to account for differences in broadcast network viewership by OTA households compared to reporting households. For a more detailed explanation of this adjustment, see Differences in Broadcast Network Viewing Share (G Calibration).


To estimate the size of the OTA stratum on a market-level basis, comScore blends two data sources:

1. comScore directly calculates the number of market-level OTA households based on (a) SNL Kagan’s estimates of OTA household percentages for each market applied to (b) the market-level universe estimates provided by the Nielsen Company.

2. comScore directly identifies the number of DBS and telco households in each market from our MVPD partners, and subtracts these counts from the market-level universe estimates provided by the Nielsen Company. comScore then calculates the number of market-level cable households based on Kagan’s estimates of each market’s Cable household percentages applied to Nielsen’s market-level universe estimates. comScore then calculates the number of OTA households in each market by subtracting the DBS, telco, and cable household estimates from Nielsen’s market-level universe estimates to arrive at an OTA stratum household estimate for each market.

comScore then takes the average of the OTA households from both approaches to derive a final OTA stratum household estimate in each market. This is performed for all 210 markets. (Prior to September 2016, comScore calculated OTA household estimates for each market based only on the first approach outlined above.)



Projecting Telco By definition, comScore considers the telco stratum to consist solely of AT&T. Similar services, such as Verizon Fios, are treated as cable providers.

Aggregating the Strata After the four viewing strata have been projected, the system aggregates them into viewing for the entire market. Any short-term coverage changes related to free previews, MVPDs dropping channels, blackouts, and so forth are performed as necessary.



Projecting to the Nation last update: 10/24//2016

TV Essentials rolls up the 210 market-based projections into national measurements. That is, to get a national average audience measurement, we sum the projected average audience for all markets. The effect of the projection process on our national and market-level live viewing measurements can be seen in the system’s actual reported hours and total projected hours.

Quantification of Data Adjustments last update: 06/30/2017

A typical question about comScore’s projection system is, “How much does each of the calibrations contribute to the projection process and the final numbers?” As previously mentioned, the system is designed to use the data we do have to model the data we don’t have in order to generate reliable television viewing metrics. At the national level, the projections account for seven to eight times the number of hours viewed.

The TV Essentials and StationView Essentials products have recently been updated to contain pie charts to illustrate how much adjustment the projection system performs on reported data. These pie charts can be found via the “Share of Adj. Calibration Impact” selection in the Help pull-down menu for each product.

Chapter 5 Adjusting for Limitations and Biases


CHAPTER 5 Adjusting for Limitations and Biases last update: 02/12/2018

comScore’s projection system is designed to adjust for the limitations and biases inherent to a passive, STB-based measurement system. That is, it uses the information that we do have to model the viewing households that we do not have and adjusts for potential differences between the reporting HHs and the rest of the market. This chapter describes these potential differences and limitations, and the steps that comScore takes to adjust for them.

As the system adjusts reported tuning information for each market, it accounts for the following: • Instances where a TV is off but the STB remains on • Incomplete TV viewing collection • Demographic and geographic distribution • OTA viewing behavior • Cable viewing behavior • Non-reporting set-top boxes (in reporting households) • Stratum network coverage • Data drops and free previews

Building TV Off/STB On Logic last update: 02/12/2018

comScore has applied years of experience with TV viewing information, gathered from millions of set-top boxes (STBs), to develop a patented solution (US Patent Nos. 8,863,166 and 9,009,749) to this problem: how to account for instances where the TV is turned off, but the STB stays on. This logic also accounts for instances when the TV is switched to a non-STB input such as a game console or Blu-ray player.

Note: Our TV-Off logic is applied to live TV viewing (this includes DVR playback that occurs within 25 seconds of the live airing that is counted as live viewing), and applied to time-shifted viewing from live content. It is not applied to DVR playback from pre-recorded content. Instead, a six-hour capping rule is applied to these DVR playback tunes.

We perform the following analysis:

1. We identify STBs that we are virtually certain are turned off when the TV is turned off.

Using AT&T data due to their STBs’ accuracy in reporting TV-off information, we identified approximately 2.8 million STBs that are reliably turned off when the TV is turned off. Using viewing information from the three-month period between July - September 2015, we identified these AT&T STBs using the following criteria:

• The STB is turned off at least once every viewing day where a tune event shorter than four hours was reported to comScore.

• Tuning to the same channel for six or more consecutive, uninterrupted hours occurs less than 1% of the time.

We also identify reliably powered-off DIRECTV STBs using their reliable power and standby event data. Using the three-month period from August - October 2015, we identified approximately 1.07 million reliable STBs using the following criteria:

• The STB had a standby-in or power-off event within 12 hours of viewing for every day with viewing. • Tuning to the same channel for four or more consecutive, uninterrupted hours occurs less than 1% of the time.

Because of STB reporting limitations at this time, DIRECTV Genie STBs are excluded from these criteria.



2. Using the viewing patterns of these 3.87 million STBs, we create probability curves that a TV is turned off after some number of minutes. We calculate one set of probability curves from the reliable AT&T STBs, which are applied to AT&T tune-level data and the most recently integrated Charter Spectrum data; one set of probability curves from the reliable DIRECTV STBs, which are applied to DIRECTV data; and one set of probability curves from all 3.87 million STBs that are applied to the Charter Communications data in the system prior to the full Charter Spectrum integration, Cox Communications data, and DISH Network data.

There are 10,584 of these TV-off curves for each set of probability curves. Within each set, the majority of the curves - 10,416 of them - apply to tunes where we know the tune’s end time. These curves change with the day of the week, the hour in which a tune starts, and the length of the tune to the nearest five-minute increments. The remaining 168 curves apply to instances when a tune is reported to comScore without an end time. These curves change with the day of the week and the hour in which a tune starts.

The following graph shows two examples TV-off curves that would be applied to tunes with a known end time:

Notice how a TV is more likely to be turned off overnight than in prime time. The Tuesday 3:00 – 4:00 AM curve has a higher probability on the vertical axis that viewing has ended, meaning it is more likely that a 115-120-minute tune at this hour will have a lower adjusted tune length after TV-Off is applied.

Applying TV Off/STB On Logic last update: 11/10/2017

The TV Off / STB On logic applies the curves to adjust all tunes of 60 minutes or more and tunes without end times. (This is applied to the imported STB tuning data prior to schedule data being applied during summarization.)

1. Assign tunes to the proper TV-Off curve in the assigned MVPD set of probability curves. • For tunes with end times, assign each tune of 60 minutes or more to the appropriate curve out of the 10,416 TV

Off curves based on the day of the week, the tune’s start time, and the tune’s length to the nearest five-minute increment. The system assigns every tune longer than six hours 10 minutes (370 minutes) to the probability curve assigned to 365-370-minute tunes.

• For tunes with no end times, assign each tune to the appropriate curve out of the 168 TV Off curves based only on the day of the week and the tune’s start time.

2. For each tune, randomly assign a probability—from 0% to 100%—that viewing has ended.



3. Adjust the tune length to the corresponding number of minutes on the TV-Off curve. For example, consider this tune:

Tune Start Tune Length Tune End

8:45 PM 120 minutes 10:45 PM

Assign the tune a random probability on its TV-Off curve; for example, 22%:

Adjust the tune to the corresponding minutes:

Tune Start Tune Length Tune End

8:45 PM 58 minutes 9:43 PM

Note: The post TV-Off total minutes of each adjusted tune is rounded to the nearest minute. The seconds component of the original tune length is retained by the TV-Off adjustment.

This methodology, by construction, assures that across many tunes the adjusted tune-length distribution matches the tune-length distribution of the STBs identified in step 1 as demonstrating reliable TV-Off / STB-Off behavior.

For some MVPDs where comScore has verified that the MVPD-provided end time for tunes is accurate, comScore determines the original tune length that is used to identify the TV Off curve to apply based on the time period between the tune's start time and end time. Because the start of a new tuning event is the trigger that ends the current tune, for these MVPDs with accurate end times, the end time of a current tune is the same as the start time of the next tune. The exceptions to this are cases where a STB Power Mode event is in between those events.

For other MVPDs, comScore uses the start time of each tune and the start time of its next tune event to determine each tune's length. The application of the TV Off logic to these tunes ensures that the aggregated adjusted tunes correspond to viewing behavior that removes STB On / TV Off bias in the reported data.

comScore does not use Power Mode events to infer tune end times because comScore's extensive analysis of STB data has indicated circumstances where some Power Mode events are not accurate in certain circumstances. The application of the TV Off logic ensures that reported tunes are adjusted to viewing distributions where the STB On / TV Off bias is removed as if accurate Power Mode information was accounted for in all reported data for all MVPDs.



Programming Exception last update: 01/26/2016

TV Off processing is not applied to tunes received for the network and time frame of the Super Bowl telecast.

Incomplete TV Viewing Collection last update: 02/12/2018

Several calendar days can elapse before comScore receives all the TV viewing for a given air date from our MVPD partners. During the time between when we begin to receive TV viewing for a given air date and when we lock the air date’s reporting, the system accounts for incomplete TV viewing to calculate ratings.

Reporting Status The following example for June 1 shows how live, household-level reporting status may progress as we receive TV viewing from our MVPD partners:

Notes:

• This graph represents one scenario for live viewing only. DVR viewing for the same date would become final 15 days later to allow for all DVR reporting windows to complete.

• This graph represents one scenario for finalizing reporting. In other scenarios, the Initial Reporting period may vary depending on the completion of finalizing schedule edits for this date.

• This graph represents one scenario for the percentage of TV Viewing Collected by day. These daily percentages vary depending on the reporting of each market, the technical data delivery to comScore by our MVPD partners on a day-by-day basis, and so on.



Reporting progresses through four statuses as we receive TV tuning from our MVPD partners:

• No Reporting:

Reporting becomes available about two to three days after the air date. In the example, reporting for June 1 becomes available on June 4.

• Incomplete Reporting:

Once reporting becomes available, the reporting fluctuates during this period as we receive more June 1 viewing from our MVPD partners.

• Initial Reporting:

Using a statistical method to estimate final reporting, we can determine when 99% of the estimated live, household-level reporting is within 5% of its final, locked value. We identify this date as Initial Day. It typically takes an air date 10 days before this initial reporting is available. In the example, June 1 becomes the Initial Day on June 11.

• Final Reporting:

Nine days after reporting becomes available, we lock the day’s reporting and identify the date as Final Day. It typically takes an air date 12 days to become final. In the example, June 1 becomes the Final Day on June 13.

Note: On occasion, comScore will freeze the Final Day in the system so we can perform maintenance or other adjustments without having to reprocess data. The system is still available during these site freezes, but the Final Day does not advance during this period. Once the maintenance is complete and the freeze is lifted, the Final Day will be brought current.

Incomplete TV Viewing Adjustment While a given air date’s reporting status is incomplete or initial, the system estimates ratings by adjusting collected TV viewing so that it reflects historical averages. The estimates are adjusted and refined as we continue to collect TV viewing.

As mentioned in Chapter 3: “Turning STB Tuning Events Into Viewing,” two of the basic building blocks of comScore’s measurements are Households and Total Hours Viewed. The projection system adjusts these numbers to reflect historical averages while TV viewing is still being collected. By comparing the reported, but incomplete, numbers to the final reported numbers for the most recent matching days of the week that have been locked, the projection system determines a ratio it uses to adjust the incomplete TV viewing numbers.

In the example above, ratings for June 1 are calculated using adjusted numbers of households and hours viewed during the period before reporting is locked on June 13. If June 1 falls on a Monday, the projection system adjusts the numbers by ratios derived from comparing the incomplete TV viewing numbers to the average numbers for the most recent final Mondays.



Demographic and Geographic Distribution (D Calibration) last update: 02/12/2018

Overview To project household-level viewing measurements such as Rating, Share, and Average Audience, the system adjusts for the demographic and geographic distribution differences between reporting households and the total number of households in each market stratum. These adjustments, collectively referred to as a D calibration, account for the following:

• Demographic distribution of reporting households • Geographic distribution of reporting households

D calibrations apply to projecting viewership for all strata.

Granularity The demographic and geographic adjustments described below are combined into a single, overall calibration for each combination of:

• < market | network | stratum >

Adjustment Limits The minimum value for this final overall calibration is 0.5. The maximum value is capped at 2.0.

Demographic Distribution of Reporting Households When the system projects household ratings, it adjusts for the variance between our reporting household demographics and the market demographics. The basic idea is to add “missing” or subtract “excess” demographic household viewership so the reporting MVPD universe matches the demographic makeup of the market.

We adjust for the following demographic segments: • Hispanic heads of households • African-American heads of households • Presence of children • Household income

The projection system adjusts tuning levels based on the percentage of total market households for those demographic segments using ZIP-code level demographic information from Devonshire Associates, Ltd. In most markets, we roll up this information for ZIP codes that begin with the same first three digits (ZIP3s). For some smaller markets where all ZIP codes begin with the same ZIP3s, we calculate this adjustment using the information for the individual ZIP codes in the market. These markets are listed below:

Bend, OR Fairbanks, AK Lafayette, IN North Platte, NE Twin Falls, ID

Eureka, CA Harlingen, TX Lima, OH Palm Springs, CA Victoria, TX

Geographic Distribution of Reporting Households The projection system weights each market’s reporting households to reflect the relative size of each ZIP code’s actual households in the market. In other words, if a MVPD’s households are over-represented in rural ZIPs, the projection system down-weights the tuning from those households. If a MVPD’s households are under-represented in urban ZIPs, the projection system up-weights the tuning from those households.



Cable Adjustments The basic geographic adjustment distributes viewing evenly across all populated, residential ZIP codes in a market. This works well for DBS households since these households are distributed across nearly every ZIP code in the nation. Cable households are not distributed as proportionally across markets as DBS households, and may not have households in every ZIP code in some cable-reporting markets. To account for this, cable geographic adjustments calculated for the top four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC) are weighted by the percentage of total market households in ZIP3s instead of a single ZIP code. We make this adjustment for both Charter and Cox markets. If there are no cable households in a ZIP3 within a market, viewing is modeled based on reported DBS viewing and the ratio of DBS to cable viewing in ZIP3s with cable households.

Station-Level Adjustments While the D calibration adjustment is applied at the market-network level, we encounter a few situations where the basic adjustment is not granular enough. This can be a due to a single market having more than one station for the same network being carried by different MVPD partners. For example, a market may have two ABC affiliates. One affiliate is carried by one satellite MVPD while the second affiliate is carried by the other satellite MVPD. In this situation, applying our market-network level adjustment to both stations could result in inaccurate ratings. We account for this by calculating a separate, station-level adjustment for each affiliate as though we projected each station at the station level.

To be eligible for station-level adjustments, the following criteria must be met: • The station must be carried by Dish and/or DIRECTV -OR- if the station is not carried by Dish and/or DIRECTV, then

comScore must be receiving viewership data for the station from Zip codes that represent 80% of the market's population.

• comScore must receive viewing from at least 2,500 demo-tagged households in a broadcast month for the station and market.

• comScore must receive at least 1,000 viewing hours in a broadcast month for the station and market from reporting operators present in the market.

• The station must be reported within its primary TV market.

This station-level adjustment is applied to the following stations:

Market

Stations

Atlanta WKTB (Telemundo)

Austin NEYE (Telemundo)

Bakersfield KABE (Univision), KZKC (Azteca)

Baltimore WMPT (PBS)

Baton Rouge EGMB (CW)

Birmingham (Ann and Tusc) WTJP (TBN)

Buffalo WNYB (TCT)

Burlington-Plattsburgh WLED (PBS)

Butte-Bozeman KXLF (CBS)

Champaign&Sprngfld-Decatur WEIU (PBS)

Charleston, SC WITV (PBS)

Charlotte WHKY (IND), WNSC (PBS), WUNE (Explore)



Market

Stations

Chattanooga WELF (TBN)

Chicago WJYS (IND), EMEU (IND)

Cleveland-Akron (Canton) WRLM (TCT), WMFD (IND)

Columbia-Jefferson City KNLJ (CTN)

Elmira (Corning) WSKA (PBS)

Flint-Saginaw-Bay City WCMU (PBS), WAQP (TCT), WCMZ (PBS)

Fresno-Visalia KMSG (Azteca)

Ft. Myers-Naples WWDT (Telemundo), WRXY (CTN)

Ft. Wayne WINM (TCT)

Grand Rapids-Kalmzoo-B.Crk WTLJ (TCT)

Greensboro-H.Point-W.Salem WLXI (TCT), WUNL (PBS)

Greenville-N.Bern-Washngtn ENCT (CW), WUNK (PBS), WUNM (Explore)

Greenvll-Spart-Ashevll-And GUNF+ (Explore)

Harlingen-Wslco-Brnsvl-McA XRIO (CW), KTFV (UniMas)

Hartford & New Haven WRDM (Telemundo)

Indianapolis WIPB (PBS)

Jackson, MS WRBJ (TBN)

Jacksonville WXGA (PBS)

Knoxville WVLR (CTN)

Lafayette, IN WTHR-LIN (NBC), WXIN (FOX)

Laredo OGNS (Telemundo)

Las Vegas NSNV (Estrella)

Los Angeles KVCR (PBS)

Louisville WKMJ (PBS)

Lubbock KXTQ (Telemundo)

Madison EHA (IND)

Medford-Klamath Falls KDKF (ABC), KMCW (Telemundo)

Memphis WBUY (TBN)

Miami-Ft. Lauderdale WFUN (IND)

Milwaukee WYTU (Telemund), WWRS (TBN)

Monterey-Salinas KMCE (Azteca)

Myrtle Beach-Florence WUNU (PBS), WJPM (PBS)

Nashville WHTN (CTN), WCTE (PBS)

New York WNJB (PBS)



Market

Stations

Norfolk-Portsmth-Newpt Nws ETKR (This TV)

Odessa-Midland KTLE (Telemundo)

Omaha NPTM (MyNet), KYNE (PBS)

Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn WTMO (Telemund)

Paducah-Cape Girard-Harsbg WTCT (TCT)

Palm Springs KVER (Univision), KCWQ (CW)

Philadelphia WMGM (IND)

Phoenix (Prescott) NTVK (IND)

Raleigh-Durham (Fayetvlle) WRAY (TCT), WUNP (Explore)

Rochestr-Mason City-Austin KSTP+ (ABC), WCCO+ (CBS)

San Diego NDTF (UniMas), XHUAA (Televisa), XEWT (Televisa), KZSD (MeTV), DDTV (MyNet)

Spokane KGPX (ION)

Tampa-St. Pete (Sarasota) WRMD (Telemundo), WSNN (IND)

Tucson (Sierra Vista) KUDF (Azteca), KFTU (UniMas)

Tulsa KGEB (GEB), NRSU (IND), KTPX (ION)

Tyler-Longview(Lfkn&Ncgd) KTRE (ABC)

Waco-Temple-Bryan KRHD (ABC), TELD (Telemund), KYLE (MyNet), KBTX (CBS), KAGS (NBC), KAMU (PBS)

Washington, DC (Hagrstwn) WDVM (IND)

Wausau-Rhinelander WTPX (ION)

West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce WBEC (IND), WWHB (Azteca)

Wichita Falls & Lawton KKTM (Telemundo)

Wichita-Hutchinson Plus KOOD (PBS)

Wilkes Barre-Scranton-Hztn WQPX (ION)

Wilmington WUNJ (PBS)

Yakima-Pasco-Rchlnd-Knnwck KTNW (PBS), KIMA (CBS), KNDU (NBC), KAPP (ABC), KCYU (FOX), KYVE (PBS), KVEW (ABC), KVVK (Univision), KEPR (CBS), KNDO (NBC), KFFX (FOX), KUNW (Univision)

Yuma-El Centro QECY (Telemundo)



OTA Viewing Behavior last update: 02/12/2018

Overview To project the OTA stratum, the system accounts for behavioral differences between the OTA households and reporting MVPD partner households as well as network availability.

Note: As mentioned in Projecting OTA, comScore considers the OTA stratum to consist solely of households that use an antenna as their only means of viewing live television and do not report any viewing by an STB. comScore’s system does not account for the OTA viewing that may occur in cable, DBS, and telco households.

While we have no direct reporting from OTA households, we know they watch TV differently from DBS, telco, and cable households. They watch some networks more and some networks less. We use a combination of consumer survey information and reported viewing data from all MVPD partners present in a market to project OTA viewing on a network-by-network basis. We use this information to account for the following:

• access only to broadcast networks • viewing individual broadcast networks in different proportions than reporting MVPD

households

The F1, F2, and G calibrations described below apply only to projecting viewership for the OTA stratum.



OTA Household Viewing Levels (F1 Calibration) OTA households may exhibit different total amounts of viewing (for the broadcast networks that they have access to) than comScore’s reporting households that are used to project viewing in the OTA stratum. comScore therefore calculates and applies an F1 calibration to account for these different total viewing levels between OTA and reporting households. This is shown in step 1 in the earlier figure.

Because OTA households do not report data to comScore that can be used to calculate viewing level differences as compared to reporting households, comScore utilizes external data sources, such as surveys, to derive F1 calibration values. In 2014, comScore deployed a local-market survey in all 210 local markets using the Google Consumer Survey platform, with a total of over 262,000 final respondents collected from all 210 markets. The 2014 GCS survey based F1 calibrations were applied in the September 2016 and September 2017 system refreshes.

In 2017, comScore deployed an updated local market TV survey for all 210 markets that was executed by comScore’s in-house survey science team, with a total 88,580 final respondents sampled from all local markets. The 2017 survey instrument was able to sample additional dayparts than the 2014 GCS survey, supporting a smaller sample since each respondent provided more data. The 2017LMTV survey based F1 calibrations were calculated and blended with 2014 GCS based F1 calibrations to support the February 2018 system refresh.

To calculate F1 calibrations from a survey, we use survey derived information of total TV viewing hours at market level between OTA HH samples and MVPD HH samples.

F1 factor for Cable stratum = (Total TV Viewing Hours per OTA Household in Market) / (Total TV Viewing Hours per Cable Household in Market) F1 factor for DBS stratum = (Total TV Viewing Hours per OTA Household in Market) / (Total TV Viewing Hours per DBS Household in Market) F1 factor for Telco stratum = (Total TV Viewing Hours per OTA Household in Market) / (Total TV Viewing Hours per Telco Household in Market

Granularity

F1 calibrations are calculated for each combination of: • < market | stratum>

Adjustment Limits

The minimum value for F1 calibrations is 0.6. The maximum value is capped at 1.1. The minimum and maximum values were chosen based on an analysis of the distribution of pre-capped values. Access Only to Broadcast Networks (F2 Calibration).

OTA households can watch only broadcast networks (for example, ABC, CBS, NBC, and so forth). We ascribe all reported viewing – for both cable and broadcast – to broadcast stations only, as illustrated in step 2 in the earlier figure. We calculate an F2 calibration to account for this increased viewership of broadcast networks.

F2 calibrations are calculated in the system daily by adding all hours viewed on all networks and dividing by the total number of hours viewed on broadcast networks for each reporting MVPD partner.

F2 = (Cable network hours viewed + Broadcast network hours viewed) / Broadcast network hours viewed

Granularity

F2 calibrations are calculated for each combination of: • < market | day | stratum >

Adjustment Limits

F2 calibrations are capped at a maximum value of 10. The minimum value is 1, since the total viewing hours will always be greater than or equal to the total broadcast network viewing hours.



Differences in Broadcast Network Viewing Share (G Calibration) OTA households view broadcast networks in different amounts than our reporting households. That is, OTA households watch certain broadcast networks more and other broadcast networks less than the non-OTA households that report to comScore – even after accounting for differential total hours (F1) and the fact that OTA households cannot watch cable networks (F2). We calculate a G calibration to adjust each station’s viewing to the appropriate share, as illustrated in step 3 of the earlier figure. This adjustment corresponds to step 3 in the earlier figure, and applies to the following broadcast networks:

ABC FOX My Network TV ION The Cowboy Channel Telemundo

CBS PBS Independent Daystar Television Network Univision Azteca

NBC The CW MeTV Christian Television Network UniMas Estrella TV

Similar to the F1 calibrations, comScore relies on external data sources, such as surveys, to derive G calibration values.

In 2014, comScore deployed a survey in all 210 local markets using the Google Consumer Survey platform, with a total of over 262,000 final respondents collected from all 210 markets. The 2014 GCS survey based G calibrations were applied in the September 2016 and September 2017 system refreshes.

In 2017, comScore deployed another local market TV survey for all 210 markets executed by comScore’s in-house survey science team, with a total of 88,580 final respondents sampled from all local markets. The 2017 LMTV survey based G calibrations were calculated and blended with 2014 GCS based G calibrations to support the February 2018 system refresh.

To calculate G calibrations from a survey, we used survey derived information of broadcast networks’ viewing levels between OTA HH samples and MVPD HH samples.

G factor for network (a) for Cable in market (b) = network (a) share in OTA households in market (b) / network (a) share in Cable households in market (b) G factor for network (a) for DBS in market (b) = network (a) share in OTA households in market (b) / network (a) share in DBS households in market (b) G factor for network (a) for Telco in market (b) = network (a) share in OTA households in market (b) / network (a) share in Telco households in market (b)

Granularity G calibrations are calculated for each combination of: • < market | broadcast network | stratum >

Adjustment Limits

For the February 2018 refresh, comScore applied 0.8 – 1.3 adjustment limits to all stations in all 210 markets. The minimum and maximum values were established based on statistical models developed using the most updated 2017 LMTV survey data.

Capping and Normalization

A function was developed and applied when comScore capped original G calibrations to the adjustment limits. Instead of capping all the G calibrations that were beyond the limits to the same upper/lower bound values, this function would maintain the relative differences and original rank order of the original G calibrations. It squeezes the entire space by pulling extreme values of G close to the limits while not changing original G calibrations near-to-1 drastically.

After original G calibrations were capped with this function, comScore normalized the capped G factors for every station in the market to their actual market total viewing hours. We used three months’ worth of actual reporting data as the source for the normalization process.

The purpose of capping is to avoid extreme factor values. The purpose of normalizing to market total viewing hours is to ensure that the G calibrations only adjust the relative viewing shares within the stations in a market, while keeping the total market hours stable before and after G calibrations are applied.



Cable Viewing Behavior (C Calibration) last update: 06/30/2017

Overview We use a combination of tune events from all MVPD partners in a market to project cable viewing for that market. This includes using reporting from our DBS and telco reporting households to project cable viewing. However, cable households watch some networks more than DBS and telco households do, while watching other networks less.

We use cable weighting calibrations (C calibrations) to account for the increased or decreased viewership of a network by cable subscribers compared to non-cable reporting households. These calibrations adjust network-level viewing differences between DBS/telco households and Cable households. They are only used to adjust the portion of DBS/telco reporting data that is used to project the total Cable stratum viewing. Thus, the adjustments are made on a network-by-network basis for DBS and telco reporting data.

Granularity C calibrations are calculated for each combination of: • < network | stratum >

Adjustment Limits The minimum value for C calibrations is 0.5. The maximum value is capped at 2.0.

Detailed Explanation We use a combination of reported viewing information from:

1. Charter Communications and Cox Communications (cable) 2. DISH Network and DIRECTV (DBS) 3. AT&T U-Verse (telco)

The C calibration is calculated as a ratio of the horizontally-adjusted (after the application of the H calibration described later to account for the non-reporting STBs in reporting HHs) total viewing hours per covered household among reporting cable households to the horizontally-adjusted total viewing hours per covered household among reporting non-cable households. For each network, we first calculate the ratio of horizontally-adjusted actual viewing hours to reporting universe households – adjusted to account for coverage for cable and DBS/telco groups – where the adjustment to actual households is to account for the non-reporting STBs in reporting households.

We first calculate the ratio of actual viewing hours to reporting universe households – adjusted to account for network coverage for cable and DBS groups. In the ratio below, covered households would be defined as the reporting household universe multiplied by the coverage fraction (whose methodology is also described later) for that network.

Horizontally-Adjusted Actual Hours / Covered HHs

We then divide the cable actual viewing hours per household ratio by the DBS and telco actual hours per household ratios for the network-specific C calibrations for DBS and telco strata. More specifically:

DBS C for network(a) = total network(a) actual cable viewing hours per cable covered household / total network(a) actual DBS viewing hours per DBS covered household

Telco C for network(a) = total network(a) actual cable viewing hours per cable covered household / total network(a) actual Telco viewing hours per Telco covered household



Non-reporting STBs (H Calibration) last update: 02/12/2018

Overview The projection system accounts for reporting households with multiple STBs where not all the STBs report tuning data. For example, a household might have two STBs, but only one reports tuning data back to the MVPD. The non-reporting STB might not be return-path capable, or may not be connected to a phone line or the Internet. This horizontal calibration (H calibration) adds a fractional amount to the reported viewership to account for these non-reporting STBs.

The H calibration applies to projecting live and DVR viewing for the DBS, cable, and OTA strata (where we use the reporting we have – including from households with non-reporting STBs – to project to the OTA stratum). Since all telco STBs report viewing data, we don’t calculate an H calibration for telco households.

Granularity H calibrations are initially calculated for each combination of:

• < MVPD | network >

Final DBS H calibrations for the projection system are then calculated at a network-level by proportionally combining the network-level DIRECTV and DISH H calibrations for a single stratum-level calibration:

• < network >

Final cable H calibrations for the projection system are calculated at the following level:

• < market | network >

These calibrations are calculated as follows:

• For markets where comScore receives only Cox Communications reporting, the network-level Cox H calibrations are installed as the Cable H calibrations.

• For markets where comScore receives only Charter Communications reporting, the network-level Charter H calibrations are installed as the Cable H calibrations.

• For markets where comScore receives both Cox Communications and Charter Communications reporting, the network-level Cox and Charter are proportionally combined to install as the Cable H calibrations

Adjustment Limits The minimum value for H calibrations is 1, because it is an upward adjustment to account for missing viewing from non-reporting STBs. There is no maximum value cap.



Detailed Explanation The H calibration is a ratio of (1) the sum of both missing and total reporting hours by (2) total reporting hours. To calculate these components, a series of steps are required.

1. Calculate the reported hours per reporting household type. Total reported hours per household are calculated over a three-month period for each network. These total reported hours are divided into subsets based on the reporting STBs versus total STBs in each household. This yields hours per household from fully-reporting households as well as various combinations of partially-reporting households (e.g., households with one reporting STBs and two total STBs, households with one reporting STB and three total STBs, etc.). These calculations are done “per reporting household type,” meaning the various reporting and non-reporting STB combinations within a household.

Only households that have reporting in the first and third month of the data period will be used for these calculations. This criterion is used to avoid using households that only reported during part of the three-month period, thereby down-weighting the overall hours per reporting household over that period.

2. Calculate the total missing hours per household. This calculation is performed by taking the difference between the network viewing hours from fully-reporting households and the partially-reporting households with the same number of total STBs.

3. Calculate total missing hours. This step is performed by combining the missing hours per household for each network with the total number of reporting households.

4. Calculate total reporting hours. This is the total reporting hours for the network for each household type (reporting STBs versus total STBs).

5. Calculate horizontal calibration. This is the ratio of both total missing hours and total reporting hours (step 3 + step 4) by total reporting hours (Step 4).

# of Reporting STBs in

Household % of Reporting

Households

1 54.76%

2 23.85%

3 12.60%

4 5.81%

5 or more 3.00%

DBS H Calibrations

Since we have both DBS MVPDs in every market, we calculate H calibration weighting for DBS households using data from fully reporting DISH Network and DIRECTV households.



Cable H Calibrations

As stated above, to allow for the fact that cable MVPDs present in a market will vary from market to market and there is no single cable MVPD in all 210 markets, our methodology for determining a cable H calibration in a given market depends on which of our reporting MVPDs are present. For Cox markets, we calculate H calibration weighting using data from fully reporting households with only non-DVR STBs. Due to limitations with Charter’s data, we calculate H calibration weighting in those markets using telco data combined with DISH Network and DIRECTV data. In markets where both MVPDs are present, we calculate an H calibration for both MVPDs using the methods above and combine them for an overall cable H calibration.

Utilization for Cox DVR Households Due to reporting limitations in Cox STB data, comScore excludes all reporting from Cox DVR-capable STBs. An analysis of data from one of our MVPD partners used for DVR measurement indicates a high correlation between live viewing on DVR and non-DVR STBs at the network, program, and daypart levels. While excluding viewing from DVR STBs does result in some live tuning being dropped for households with DVR STBs, the bias introduced by this is minimal. We treat households with a mix of DVR and non-DVR STBs as partially reporting households and use the H calibration to account and adjust for the missing viewing. Cox households with only DVR-capable STBs are treated as non-reporting households and addressed by the system’s coverage adjustments described in Calculating a Market’s Television Households. The fully- and partially-reporting Cox households included in our TV Essentials and StationView Essentials reporting account for approximately two-thirds of Cox’s reporting total footprint.



Stratum Network Coverage last update: 10/24/2016

Overview For live and DVR viewing, the projection system must account for variances between the reporting MVPD partners’ network coverage and the projected stratum’s network coverage in each market. To arrive at network coverage adjustments, the system uses data from reporting households in conjunction with network availability and subscriber household count information from third-party sources including SNL Kagan, FYI Television, and Warren Communications News.

This information is combined with the projected market universe estimates described in Chapter 5 to arrive at a database of stratum network coverage adjustments.

The stratum network coverage adjustments are updated annually.

This stratum network coverage adjustment applies to projecting live and DVR viewing for the cable stratum.

Granularity The stratum network coverage adjustments are calculated for each combination of:

• < stratum | market | network >

Adjustment Limits None.

Detailed Explanation The stratum network coverage adjustment is used in the projected rating calculation described below:

1. Calculate the rating among reporting households.

For example, suppose that the reported viewing shows the average audience for A.M. Show on Network XYZ is 1500 out of 100,000 reporting households:

Rating = (Average Audience / Reporting Households) * 100 = (1500 / 100,000) * 100 = 1.5

2. Apply the MVPDs’ network coverage to calculate a “coverage-adjusted” rating.

We calculate a coverage-adjusted rating, which measures viewing among only the reporting households that can view the network. For example, suppose that 80% of the reporting households carry a subscription to the network.

Coverage-Adjusted Rating = Rating / % Coverage-Adjusted Households = 1.5 / 0.80 = 1.875

3. Apply the stratum’s network coverage to calculate a projected rating.

The projection system applies the coverage-adjusted rating, 1.875, to all of the market’s covered households in that stratum. In other words, it assumes that 1.875% of the stratum households that can watch the network do watch the network. If 60% of all households in the stratum carry a subscription to the network:

Projected Rating = Coverage-Adjusted Rating * Stratum Network Coverage = 1.875 * 0.60 = 1.125



Data Stabilization Adjustments last update: 02/12/2018

Various factors can affect a network’s coverage for short periods by either increasing or decreasing the number of households able to view the network and the number of hours viewed. Some conditions, such as a blackout in one market that affects many networks for one night, are unexpected. Other conditions affecting coverage are scheduled, such as when a subscription-based network offers a free preview for a weekend in multiple markets.

comScore’s experience has shown that viewing data from our reporting MVPDs can be unknowingly lost due to limitations in a MVPD’s data or reporting infrastructure. Periodically, comScore and our reporting MVPDs will work together to identify and resolve a data reporting problem that was previously unknown to both parties and causing loss of data. comScore can also identify these data losses when our total household reporting levels are disproportionately lower than previous seasonal trends based on year-to-year comparisons, or from other publicly available third party sources.

Regardless of cause, scope, and duration, these calibrations affect the number of households and hours viewed used in our projections. The projection system can account for the short-term variations in coverage with special short-term adjustments to the number of viewing households and hours viewed at the network level in the affected markets. Adjustments are also applied to offset longer-term total reported viewing losses from unknown data anomalies. The projection system uses historical viewing levels to adjust the affected networks and dates for both scenarios.

Granularity The data stabilization adjustments are calculated for each combination of Live Hours Viewed, Live HHs, DVR Hours Viewed, and DVR HHs at the following granularity:

• < market | network >

Data Drops We occasionally experience data drops from our MVPD partners. These data drops can result from technical issues such as communication interruptions (similar to when your Internet Service Provider has a disruption) and corrupt data files and from natural causes such as a storm causing a blackout. In many of these cases, the data drops are corrected by the MVPD partner re-sending a data file before the affected dates become Final. In situations where the data cannot be re-sent, the drop may or may not have a meaningful impact on projected viewing information. If the data drop persists for multiple days and results in a drop in projected viewing levels exceeding 10%, comScore may determine an adjustment ratio to correct the affected market’s projected viewing hours based on the market’s historical average viewing.

Another situation where comScore experiences data drops are due to retransmission disputes when the carriage agreement between one of our MVPDs and a network or station expires before it is renewed. In these cases, the MVPD does not offer programming content from the network or station for the duration of the dispute. This means that comScore also does not receive tuning data from the MVPD for the affected network or station, because no viewing took place. In situations where comScore is aware of these disputes, comScore discloses the dispute and calculates a data drop adjustment to correct the affect market’s projected viewing hours.



These data drop adjustments are calculated once an affected day is identified as Initial Day to ensure we have received the majority of viewing data for affected dates from all MVPD partners (see “Reporting Status” on page 33 for more information on Initial Day). By comparing the market’s projected viewing hours during the period affected by the data drop to its average projected viewing hours for the most recent matching days of the week, we determine a ratio to adjust the market’s projected viewing hours impacted by the data drop. The same ratio is used to adjust all stations and networks within the market. These adjustments apply to projections only during the time frame affected by the data drop.

comScore takes the following steps to adjust for a data drop:

1. When we identify a market experiencing a data drop, we look at the market’s projected viewing hours for the same day of the week that are marked as final for the previous five weeks.

For example, suppose we notice the projected viewing hours for Market A look low for Tuesday, October 1st.

Total projected hours for the Market A on Tuesday, October 1: 70 hours

Projected viewing hours for the five most recent matching final Tuesdays in Market A:

a. Tuesday, August 27 = 97 hours b. Tuesday, September 3 = 96 hours c. Tuesday, September 10 = 110 hours d. Tuesday, September 17 = 107 hours e. Tuesday, September 24 = 94 hours

2. We drop the minimum (September 24) and maximum (September 10) of the five and average the three remaining days. We refer to this as “five, three” logic.

“Five, three” average of the most recent matching final days = (97 + 96 + 107) / 3 = 300 / 3 = 100 hours

3. Next, we divide the “five, three” average by the projected hours for the data drop day.

“Five, three” average / data drop day hours = 100 / 70 = 1.429

4. If this ratio is greater than 1.10, we use it as our calibration for viewing hours on the data drop day.

Adjusted viewing hours = 70 * 1.429 = 100

Year-Over-Year Data Drop We occasionally identify continual, long-term declines in the amount of data being reported by our MVPD partners. We compensate for this ongoing data drop using the stabilization adjustment, but using a different historical period for comparison. Instead of the most recent five-week period, we calculated a ratio of the market’s current weekly number of households and hours viewed compared to the same period from the previous year. This additional yearly data drop adjustment is combined with any other data drop adjustments applied to the market’s hours and households.

As of September 2016, we have further normalized the long-term stabilization adjustments across networks at a market level to implement a consistent baseline across each individual market to account for these long-term drops.



Free Previews A free preview is a period of time during which a MVPD makes a subscription network available to subscriber households that otherwise cannot access the network. This increases the network’s coverage for the duration of the free preview. When comScore makes adjustments to account for a free preview period, we analyze its impact on reported viewing – a process that can only occur after the free preview has begun. Unless a free preview adjustment has taken effect, you should not use the network’s measurements for the free preview period.

comScore takes the following steps when adjusting for a free preview to account for the fact that projected hours would be overestimated due to a MVPD being on free preview during a known period:

1. We compare reported viewing from the first seven days of the free preview to the same days of the week for the five weeks preceding the free preview and adjust our calibrations accordingly. If an applicable long-term stabilization adjustment is already in place for a market, we adjust that existing adjustment by the free preview adjustment

a. Free preview viewing hours = projections including hours from the MVPD on free preview during this period.

b. Adjusted viewing hours = modeled hours from MVPDs that are not on free preview during this period.

c. Free preview adjustment = Adjusted viewing hours / Free preview viewing hours

d. Final stabilization calibration = Free preview adjustment × Existing stabilization adjustment

2. We re-process the network’s measurements for the free preview period.

Note: We only re-process full broadcast days. For example, if a MVPD begins a preview on the evening before the announced free preview period, that evening’s viewing is not adjusted.

3. When the free preview period is over, we return the calibrations to their original levels.

An example of a free preview adjustment is illustrated in the figure below. In this figure, Projected Viewing Hours represents a mock-up of comScore viewing estimates – including after an example free preview stabilization adjustment for the dates 10/7-10/10 – while Unadjusted Free Preview Viewing Hours represents projections including unadjusted hours from the MVPD on free preview between 10/7-10/10.

Appendix A Cable TV Market List


CHAPTER 6 Appendices

Appendix A - Cable TV Market List last update: 02/12/2018

The tables below list the markets where we have cable TV coverage by MVPD.

Charter Spectrum TV Markets

The following markets have had integrated Charter data effective broadcast April 2013:

Alpena Detroit Kansas City Nashville Sacramnto-Stkton-Modesto

Atlanta Duluth-Superior Knoxville New Orleans San Francisco-Oak-San Jose

Birmingham (Ann and Tusc)

Eugene La Crosse-Eau Claire Norfolk-Portsmth-Newpt Nws

SantaBarbra-SanMar-SanLuOb

Boston (Manchester) Fargo-Valley City Lafayette, LA North Platte Seattle-Tacoma

Burlington-Plattsburgh Flint-Saginaw-Bay City Los Angeles Omaha Springfield-Holyoke

Charlotte Grand Rapids-Kalmzoo-B.Crk

Madison Paducah-Cape Girard-Harsbg

St. Louis

Chattanooga Green Bay-Appleton Mankato Portland, OR Traverse City-Cadillac

Cheyenne-Scottsbluff Greensboro-H.Point-W.Salem

Marquette Quincy-Hannibal-Keokuk Tri-Cities, TN-VA

Chico-Redding Greenvll-Spart-Ashevll-And

Medford-Klamath Falls Raleigh-Durham (Fayetvlle)

Wausau-Rhinelander

Columbia-Jefferson City Hartford & New Haven Milwaukee Reno Yakima-Pasco-Rchlnd-Knnwick

Dallas-Ft. Worth Huntsville-Decatur (Flor) Minneapolis-St. Paul Rochester-Mason City-Austin

Denver Jackson, TN Montgomery-Selma Rockford

The following markets have had integrated Charter data effective broadcast September 2017:

Albuquerque-Santa Fe Colorado Springs-Pueblo Greenville-N.Bern-Washngtn

Macon Rapid City

Billings Columbus, GA (Opelika, AL)

Helena Missoula Springfield, MO

Butte-Bozeman Grand Junction-Montrose Idaho Fals-Pocatllo(Jcksn) Monterey-Salinas Wilmington

Casper-Riverton Great Falls Lincoln & Hastings-Krny Providence-New Bedford

Appendix A Cable TV Market List

Description of Methodology 47

© 2018 comScore Inc. | CONFIDENTIAL – DO NOT DUPLICATE OR TRANSMIT WITHOUT PERMISSION

The following markets have had integrated Charter data following the full Charter Spectrum integration effective broadcast February 2018:

Albany-Schenectady-Troy Columbus, OH Harlingen-Wslco-Brnsvl-McA

Omaha* Toledo

Austin Corpus Christi Indianapolis Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn

Utica

Beaumont-Port Arthur Dallas-Ft. Worth* Kansas City Palm Springs Waco-Temple-Bryan

Birmingham (Ann and Tusc)*

Dayton Laredo Portland-Auburn Watertown

Buffalo Detroit* Lima Raleigh-Durham (Fayetvlle)*

Wichita Falls & Lawton

Burlington-Plattsburgh* El Paso (Las Cruces) Lincoln & Hastings-Krny* Rochester-Mason City-Austin*

Wilmington*

Charleston, SC Elmira (Corning) Los Angeles* San Antonio Youngstown

Charlotte* Erie Milwaukee* San Diego Zanesville

Cincinnati Green Bay-Appleton* Myrtle Beach-Florence Savannah

Cleveland-Akron (Canton) Greensboro-H.Point-W.Salem*

New York Syracuse

Columbia, SC Greenville-N.Bern-Washngtn*

Norfolk-Portsmth-Newpt Nws*

Tampa-St. Pete (Sarasota)

* Market previously contained Charter integrated data.

Cox Communications TV Markets

Baton Rouge Lafayette, LA New Orleans Phoenix (Prescott) Topeka

Cleveland-Akron (Canton)

Las Vegas Norfolk-Portsmth-Newpt Nws

Providence-New Bedford Tucson (Sierra Vista)

Ft. Smith-Fay-Sprngdl-Rgrs

Los Angeles Oklahoma City Roanoke-Lynchburg Tulsa

Gainesville Macon Omaha San Diego Washington, DC (Hagrstwn)

Hartford & New Haven Mobile-Pensacola (Ft Walt)

Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn

SantaBarbra-SanMar-SanLuOb

Wichita-Hutchinson Plus

Appendix B Telco Market List


Appendix B - Telco Market List last update: 02/12/2018

The table below lists the markets where we have telco coverage.

Atlanta Columbus, OH Houston Memphis San Antonio

Austin Corpus Christi Huntsville-Decatur (Flor) Miami-Ft. Lauderdale San Diego

Bakersfield Dallas-Ft. Worth Indianapolis Milwaukee San Francisco-Oak-San Jose

Baton Rouge Dayton Jackson, MS Mobile-Pensacola (Ft Walt)

South Bend-Elkhart

Biloxi-Gulfport Detroit Jacksonville Monterey-Salinas Springfield, MO

Birmingham (Ann and Tusc)

El Paso (Las Cruces) Kansas City Nashville St. Louis

Champaign&Sprngfld-Decatur

Flint-Saginaw-Bay City Knoxville New Orleans Toledo

Charleston, SC Fresno-Visalia Lansing Odessa-Midland Topeka

Charlotte Ft. Smith-Fay-Sprngdl-Rgrs

Little Rock-Pine Bluff Oklahoma City Tulsa

Chattanooga Grand Rapids-Kalmzoo-B.Crk

Los Angeles Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn

West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce

Chicago Green Bay-Appleton Louisville Raleigh-Durham (Fayetvlle)

Wichita-Hutchinson Plus

Cleveland-Akron (Canton)

Greensboro-H.Point-W.Salem

Lubbock Reno

Columbia, SC Greenvll-Spart-Ashevll-And

Madison Sacramnto-Stkton-Modesto

Appendix C Data Adjustment/Projection Calibration Updates


Appendix C - Data Adjustment/Projection Calibration Updates last update: 02/12/2018

Adjustment Last Refresh

Demographic Measurements (Experian demographic tags) September 2017

Applying TV Off / STB On Logic September 2016

Demographic and Geographic Distribution (D Calibration) September 2017 (Satellite stratum) February 2018 (Cable stratum)

OTA Household Viewing Levels (F1 Calibration) February 2018

Access Only to Broadcast Networks (F2 Calibration) Daily

Differences in Broadcast Network Viewing Share (G Calibration)

February 2018

Cable Viewing Behavior (C Calibration) September 2016 (Broadcast Networks), December 2016 (Cable Networks)

Non-reporting Set-top Boxes (H Calibration) September 2017 (Satellite stratum) February 2018 (Cable stratum)

Data Drop and Free Preview Adjustments As needed (varies by market and network)

MVPD coverage AT&T - September 2017 Charter - February 2018 Cox – September 2017 DIRECTV - September 2017 DISH - September 2017

Network subscriber counts September 2017

Coverage availability September 2017

Strata universe estimates September 2017

Market universe estimates September 2017

Ongoing/Maintenance Updates Due to various market conditions, data availability, and technical developments, comScore adjusts for the following as the change occurs during the course of the year:

• Free previews • Reported data drops • Coverage changes • New reporting MVPD data • Software updates • Channel lineup changes including new networks and channels and affiliation changes for existing networks and channels

Appendix D Adding and Removing Stations/Networks to/from SVE/TVE


Appendix D - Adding and Removing Stations/Networks to/from SVE/TVE last update: 06/30/2017

To ensure enough data is available for reliable reporting, new stations or networks must meet specified criteria before they are candidates to be added to StationView Essentials or TV Essentials. Candidate stations and networks are then considered by comScore for addition to SVE and TVE. All new stations and networks are added to SVE and TVE by comScore at the beginning of broadcast months.

Adding Networks to TVE The following criteria must be met for a new network to be a candidate for addition to TVE:

1. comScore must have a national subscriber count for the network. Most of comScore’s network subscriber counts are provided by SNL Kagan.

2. The network must be carried by DISH and/or DIRECTV so comScore can receive reporting from all 210 markets where a network may be carried in order to support National reporting and DVR metrics.

3. After the network is carried by DISH and/or DIRECTV, it must be carried by additional reporting MVPDs in order to ensure more than one MVPD partner’s viewership contributes to comScore’s projections.

4. If the network is a broadcast network, comScore must receive data in all markets where a local affiliate is available, to ensure comScore’s projections for the network are accurate.

Adding Stations to SVE The following criteria must be met for a new station to be a candidate for addition to SVE:

1. The station must be carried by DISH and/or DIRECTV to support sufficient demographically-matched (via Experian) reporting, DVR metrics, and reporting across the entire geography of the market. (Satellite-based service providers are inherently available across a market’s geography, whereas cable and telco service providers are only available to a market’s household within the perimeter of the infrastructure that the service provider has built out in the market.)

2. comScore must receive viewership data for the station from zip codes that represent 80% of the market’s population. This is to ensure comScore has sufficient breadth and depth of reporting to support the precision of local metrics, and to sufficiently support comScore’s geographical-based reports such as heat maps.

3. comScore must receive viewing from at least 2,500 demographically-matched households in a broadcast month for the station and market. This is to ensure comScore has sufficient and consistently stable reporting to support accurate metrics.

There may be cases where a station is carried by a cable provider, but not necessarily by DISH or DIRECTV. In these cases, comScore may report viewing for those stations if comScore receives at least 1,000 viewing hours in a broadcast month for the station and market from our reporting MVPD partners in that market. However, comScore would not be able to report DVR metrics for these stations, and would generally not report demographic metrics for these stations.

Appendix D Adding and Removing Stations/Networks to/from SVE/TVE


Removing Networks/Stations from TVE/SVE Networks or stations may be removed from TVE/SVE by comScore when the network or station is no longer reportable. This can occur, for example, when:

1. A network or station is discontinued. 2. A network or station is dropped by reporting MVPDs. 3. A station affiliation changes to a network that is not currently summarized in comScore’s system. 4. A network is rebranded to a new network such that it is appropriate to create a new network identifier and remove

the existing network. E.g., the content in the new network is different to the point that maintaining report trending across the cutover period is not appropriate.

Limitations Networks and stations can currently be removed from TVE/SVE from a specific date forward, which would leave all historic data visible within SVE/TVE for the removed network or station. However, if that network or station is added back to TVE/SVE at a future date, all historic data will no longer be available, as TVE/SVE currently support only one continuous date range for network reporting.

Appendix E Set Top Box / MVPD Reporting Limitations


Appendix E- Set Top Box / MVPD Reporting Limitations last update: 02/12/2018

In certain situations, a STB may not provide all the information needed to completely re-construct an accurate description of the viewing activity that took place. Such cases, which are outlined below, are discovered through comScore’s ongoing schedule of detailed testing, reviews of data and discussion with MVPDs. Each issue is investigated and once the behavior is confirmed, comScore quantifies the effects on the data, to the extent possible, as shown in the individual system limitation descriptions within this appendix. It should be noted that each of the issues are generally restricted to just a subset of comScore’s MVPDs and to a subset of STB types used by that MVPD.

To protect the identity of our MVPD partners, comScore has obfuscated the proprietary components of these limitation descriptions. In many cases, this results in a more generic representation of the issue.

In its ongoing investigation, comScore has observed the aggregated (i.e., final) effect of selected system limitations on comScore’s reported metrics to be much less than the subset’s effect and therefore quite small. comScore continues to advance the overall assessment of this total impact, seeking to further correct or ameliorate effects on reported metrics. To do so, each system limitation is independently investigated to determine the impact of that individual issue. comScore then aggregates each of the individual impacts in order to generate the total aggregated impact that all known system limitations have on comScore’s data. comScore includes newly assessed system limitations as they become known, the behavior is confirmed, and comScore is able to assess the impact.

Results from this ongoing investigation into aggregate effects show that the overall impact on Live + DVR tuning is less than 1% at the National level; while the average market level impact is 0.0037%.

Incorrect Content ID One series of STB models occasionally reports the channel viewed during playback of previously recorded content with an identifier, called a content ID, that does not map to any of the channels listed as part of the channel lineup for a given market. In these cases, the system drops the viewing associated with the unidentified content ID.

Analyses show that this results in an understatement of reported audience estimates due to DVR playback events not being mapped to a valid identifier:

Understatement of Live and Live+DVR hours

Market Live hours impact Market Live+DVR hours impact National Live hours impact

National Live+DVR hours impact Min Avg Max Min Avg Max

N/A N/A N/A 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% N/A 0.00%

Identifying Buffered Viewing Currently, comScore cannot reliably identify fast forward / rewind or pause activities during buffered viewing on STBs from three of comScore’s MVPDs. This can cause the duration of a live viewing session to be extended by the duration of the FF/RW/Pause activity.

Analyses show that this results in an overstatement of reported audience estimates for the first affected MVPDs:



MVPD A Overstatement of Live and Live+DVR hours



0.00% 0.08% 0.63% 0.00% 0.07% 0.57% 0.16% 0.15%

MVPD B Overstatement of Live and Live+DVR hours



0.00% 0.01% 0.17% 0.00% <0.01% 0.16% <0.01% <0.01%

MVPD C Overstatement of Live and Live+DVR hours



0.00% 0.01% 0.21% 0.00% 0.01% 0.19% 0.01% 0.01%

Sequence Error in Reported Tuning Data In some cases, certain STBs from one of comScore’s MVPDs will return two different tuning events occurring at the same time, one of which is invalid. In most cases comScore selects the correct one for processing, however there are instances where the invalid event is selected with the effect that the (correct) live viewing session in that household is excluded from audience estimates. This can lead to an underestimation of Live viewing. Incorrect Content Time Reported for Buffered Viewing (1).

Some STBs from one of comScore’s MVPDs are known to occasionally report incorrect times for recorded content which may cause viewing to be assigned to the wrong broadcast time or program and this may also affect DVR same day playback or live audience reporting. These events often occur in situations where viewers utilize trick functionalities on DVR-capable STBs for the affected MVPD.

Incorrect Content Time Reported for Buffered Viewing (2) In a similar situation to the issue described above, STBs from a different MVPD occasionally report an incorrect content time for buffered tuning and this can cause the viewed channel to be credited as live viewing instead of DVR playback.

Analysis shows that this results in an overstatement of Live reported audience estimates, and either an understatement or overstatement of Live+DVR hours depending on the market and the distribution of the affected MVPD’s DVR reporting in each market:

Overstatement of Live and Understatement/Overstatement of DVR hours



0.01% 0.20% 0.49% (0.01%) 0.06% 0.17% 0.15% 0.05%



VOD Viewing Assigned to Previous Channel Viewed Two of comScore’s MVPDs do not currently provide us with information about viewing of VOD content. As a result, comScore cannot detect when viewing switches from live content to VOD and comScore continues to assign viewing to the previous live viewing activity for the total time of the VOD viewing.

The impact is believed to be small for both MVPDs given comScore’s analysis, which was based on the distribution of impacted models in each market, for each MVPD.

Overstatement of Live and Live+DVR hours



0.00% 0.33% 2.10% 0.00% 0.30% 2.06% 0.30% 0.27%

Power On Events Differences in MVPD data result in STB power on events being reported inconsistently by comScore’s MVPDs and across different STB models. In some cases, the STB does not report that it has been powered on, nor does it provide a channel change event at that time. In such situations, comScore is not able to count the viewing on the STB from the time it is powered on until the next channel change occurs. This can lead to an underestimation of both Live and DVR viewing.

Picture in Picture Viewing For certain MVPDs, comScore cannot reliably identify PIP or menu events and this may result in some viewing being counted even though the screen is obscured by a menu. In other cases, when a viewer swaps tuning between the main TV screen and a PIP window, comScore does not always detect that the swap has occurred and continues to count the viewing of the channel originally being viewed before the PIP event took place.

Our analysis shows that this picture swapping behavior is rare (viewers are more inclined to change channels either using a menu or inputting a channel number) and impacts approximately 0.02% of identified events.

Tuning to Unsubscribed Channels The information provided to comScore when a subscriber attempts to view a channel that they are not subscribed to varies from one MVPD to another. In such cases, the viewer will be seeing either a blank screen or a message and not the broadcast content. Some MVPDs do not provide tuning events in these cases. Therefore, comScore continues to count the unsubscribed tuning to the previous channel viewed since there is no indication that the STB has switched channels. For other MVPDs, STB tunes to an unsubscribed channel are reported to us as normal channel tunes and are counted towards tuning to that channel, even though the STB is not subscribed and cannot view the content.

In either case the duration of this event is likely to be small since the viewer is seeing a screen without content. Utilizing historic data from one MVPD partner, comScore determined the impact of Live viewing hours to be a mere fraction of a percent. Note that free previews are unaffected by these issues as they will be reported in the raw data correctly.



Playback on Network Configured STBs Network-home setups make use of shared DVR functionalities whereby buffered and recorded content may be viewed on another STB, which may or may not have its own DVR capabilities. In households for one of comScore’s MVPDs where comScore does not utilize data from DVR STBs, the result for recorded content is that the playback time is added to the previous live channel viewed on the non-DVR STB and buffered content is treated as a single contiguous live tune.

DVR Playback Events Not Included in Reporting

For some STBs, comScore is not yet processing DVR playback activity and is thus unaware of the change in activity on the STB. In certain cases, this results in extending viewing to the previous live channel tuned for the duration of the playback activity.

Analysis shows that this results in an overstatement of reported audience estimates:

Overstatement of Live and Live+DVR hours



0.00% 0.30% 2.89% 0.00% 0.26% 2.46% 0.24% 0.20%

Addressable DVR Ad Events Interrupt DVR Viewing Information received from the DVR STB models of one MVPD contain addressable DVR ad events which could interrupt DVR viewing measurement. As a result, comScore receives the viewing in two parts. In some cases, this could result in underreporting of DVR data.

Missing Playback Events for Buffered Viewing For another MVPD, one type of DVR STB does not report a small subset of buffered DVR events in certain cases. This can result in an understatement of DVR activity.

DVR Playback Events Not Included in Reporting (2) Trickplay events for one MVPD are indistinguishable from any other playback event and are thus treated similarly within comScore’s data processing system without issue. However, one STB type does not return event indicators at skip back DVR trickplay events. In some cases, this could result in an understatement of DVR activity.

DVR Record Event Indicators Certain events received from one of our MVPD partners indicate when a tune occurs for the purpose of recording a DVR program. In some cases, comScore is unable to rely on the DVR record event indicators’ accuracy for determining Live or DVR viewing. This may result in an overstatement of Live viewing. Initial analysis shows this effect is extremely small with the impact to Live tuning <0.4% and to DVR <0.02%.

Tuner Signal Reporting Overlap In certain circumstances, ambiguities in the tuner signals from a subset of STB models from one of comScore’s MVPDs can cause overlapping tunes on multiple tuners within the STB. This can result in additional tunes and the potential for valid tunes to be ended unintentionally. This can lead to an underestimation of Live viewing.

DVR Tuning Overlap

In specific circumstances for one of comScore’s MVPDs, DVR tuning events received without an associated DVR end event can result in overlapping tunes. This can occur when a user ends a DVR playback by powering off the STB directly and may result in an overstatement of DVR viewing.

Appendix F Other Measurement Limitations


Appendix F - Other Methodological Notes and Measurement Limitations last update: 02/12/2018

While comScore works to mitigate bias in its reporting, there are a few reporting limitations resulting from data issues or projection granularity that comScore does not adjust for at this time. comScore plans to address these limitations in future updates.

This section also makes notes of methodologies that are specific to certain areas of the system.

MVPD Maintenance Events In performance of system maintenance some MVPDs send downloads to STBs, typically during the early morning hours. As STBs are programmed to perform these downloads at a specific time this can result in a large number of STBs switching channels at the same time, resulting in a sudden increase in reported tuning activity.

comScore is working with MVPDs to define and implement a business rule to exclude these events from reporting.

Note: It is standard practice for comScore to send notification of these events in regular system disclosures.

Non-DBS Networks and Stations The presence of Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) households in every TV market makes DBS viewing data a primary part of comScore measurements. Due to the differences in channel lineups across comScore’s MVPDs, comScore cannot provide full reporting on a small number of networks and stations that are not carried by comScore’s DBS MVPDs. In these cases, comScore uses reported viewing from markets where these networks and stations are carried by comScore’s other MVPDs to project household viewing measurements at the national level. While comScore still reports live household viewing data for these networks and stations, the absence of DBS data means that DVR and demographic measurements are not available, and some market-level measurements will be low or unavailable. These networks and stations are identified with an asterisk (*) in reports.

Unified Networks Some networks provide both a broadcast affiliate feed and a cable feed that are separately reported to comScore by our MVPD partners. Beginning in August 2013, comScore began unifying the broadcast and cable reporting of the following networks in our system, with the individual broadcast and cable feeds still reported separately for months prior to August 2013:

Azteca ION Telemundo Trinity Broadcasting Network UniMas Univision

Beginning in July 2017, comScore began unifying the broadcast and cable reporting of the following networks, with the individual feeds still reported separately for months prior to July 2017 for the cases where these feeds were separately reported:

Christian Television Network Daystar Television Network



Beginning in September 2017, comScore began unifying an additional two networks:

The Cowboy Channel Estrella TV

Because SVE reports at the station level with projection calibrations calculated at the market/network level, combining the broadcast and cable feeds can result in projection changes for some broadcast affiliates of these networks. comScore refined this methodology in June 2015 to improve the accuracy of the coverage calculations for these networks, which helped address this change in projections for many of these affected broadcast affiliates.

Markets with No Demographic Reporting Demographic reporting for the following five markets is disabled due to the return-path demographic data set for these markets being insufficient in size to meet needed demographic reporting levels:

Alpena Fairbanks Glendive Juneau Zanesville

Quarter-Hour Share and SIU Metrics comScore’s projections are currently calculated at the day level, and rolled up to longer durations of reporting or applied to shorter durations of reporting based on the different levels of viewership during each period. The manner in which projections are currently applied to quarter-hour reporting can result in cases where the sum of quarter-hour Share metrics can be greater than 100. comScore estimates that 2.15% of QH Share metrics are impacted by +/- 10% or greater, and that 1.56% of QH SIU metrics are impacted by +/- 10% or greater.

Demographic Share Metrics in Essentials Data Feeds, API, and SVE Demo Rating Grid Demographic Share metrics are calculated in comScore’s Essential data feeds and Essentials API as the ratio of Demographic Rating and Demographic SIU. The Demographic Ratings used for these Demographic Share calculations are derived from the HH Ratings and the Demographic Indices that also appear on SVE/TVE. A Demographic Rating is calculated as the product of the HH Rating multiplied by the Demographic Index. In this way, the Demographic Index is an adjustment factor based on the relative differences between how HHs in a demographic segment watch the programming relative to the broader population of HHs.

Every Demographic Index is calculated based on differences in viewing between comScore’s demographically-tagged reporting households for a particular demographic segment relative to all households. These Demographic Indices are not calculated with a constraint that the resulting Demographic Ratings (when a Demographic Index is multiplied into a HH Rating) will sum to the current definition of Demographic HUT. Therefore, the Demographic Shares in comScore’s feeds may not sum to 100.

Reprocessing Broadcast Stations When comScore reprocesses historical viewership metrics for broadcast stations and the reported viewership from a MVPD partner changes as part of that effort, this potentially changes the comparison of reported broadcast and cable hours as part of the daily F2 calibration calculations. However, these changes to the market-level F2 calibration are not carried forward to other broadcast stations in that market that are not in scope for that reprocessing effort, because the metrics for those other stations are not in scope for being restated.

Secondary OTA Viewing in Reporting Households comScore considers the OTA stratum to consist solely of households that use an antenna as their only means of viewing live television and do not report any viewing by an STB. comScore’s system does not account for the OTA viewing that may occur in cable, DBS, or telco households.



Daylight Saving Time comScore does not adjust tune data reported during the time shifts on the days that start and end Daylight Saving Time (DST). The missing hour at the beginning of DST causes reported tunes to be longer. That is, a 10-minute tune that starts at 1:55 AM will have an end time of 3:05 AM due to the jump from 1:59 AM to 3:00 AM. In contrast, the repeated hour at the end of DST causes reported tunes to be shorter. Since the time shifts only occur on the days that start and end DST and the amount of tuning reported at that time of day is minimal, this affects two hours of viewing each year and represents less than 2% of an average Sunday's reported viewing.

AT&T DVR Penetration comScore determines DVR coverage using the percentage of a MVPD’s households that have a DVR and refers to this component of DVR coverage as DVR penetration. Based on an update from AT&T, comScore has determined that AT&T's DVR coverage is overestimated by approximately 2%. comScore has not updated this percentage in the system, but has determined that the impact resulting from this difference is less than 0.5% in DVR viewing.

AT&T Application Channels AT&T offers several application channels that are associated with parent networks. The behavior of these applications in the tune data varies, depending on the type of application. The commonality they all share is that a tune to an application channel takes the viewer to an application entry page. This page then allows the viewer to enter the application by clicking OK on the remote. Any time spent on this entry screen prior to clicking OK is credited to the application channel. The only viewing time that gets credited to most application channels is the time spent on the entry screen prior to clicking OK to enter the application itself. Our analysis shows the amount of viewing credited to the application channel entry screen varies, but the highest percentage of application viewing for a network is just over 1% for CNBC.

Inclusion of New Data after Day is Marked Final comScore will reprocess data on occasions when it is deemed necessary to ensure comScore’s published metrics are correct after a given reporting day has been labeled as Final. Since comScore continues to receive MVPD data for a given day after that day is marked as Final, reprocessing the day’s viewing will include additional viewing hours that were not included prior to reprocessing. This means that reprocessed data will sometimes include additional hours viewed.

Transient Reporting Issues The passive nature of comScore’s viewership collection means comScore occasionally receives spurious or anomalous events in the data that can affect comScore’s reported metrics. These events can range from firmware updates causing a substantial number of STBs to reboot at once to Emergency Broadcast System updates causing a spike in reported viewing. In most cases, these issues are minor, and comScore will post a notification alerting clients to the occurrence. In cases where an issue recurs or has a measurable impact to comScore’s reported metrics, comScore will notify clients of the impact and associated plans to correct for it (to the extent possible).

Commercial STB Tuning Some of comScore’s MVPD partners are unable to detect and remove commercial STB viewing. Based on a heuristic where comScore infers commercial-reporting entities based on the number of STBs associated with that entity, comScore estimates that “commercial” HHs represent approximately 0.1% of comScore’s total reporting HHs.



Program Discrepancies Schedule discrepancies may be present in the reported data due to such factors as receiving program line ups late, changes to planned telecast airings, unscheduled events, incorrect schedule information in the source data, and other such factors. While comScore has procedures in place to reduce the likelihood of these discrepancies, at any given point in time, we expect to have a small amount of error in reported program detail. To measure this, comScore analyzed thousands of tests performed in its set-top-box lab run between January – April 2017 comparing reported schedule data to what actually appeared on the TV during that time period. The findings suggest a schedule discrepancy rate less than 1.4%. Please note, this % is directional.

Networks Without Demographic, DVR or Market-level Metrics For some networks in TV Essentials, comScore reports only national Live household ratings and does not support demographic, DVR, or market-level metrics. These networks are:

• BET Jams • BET Soul • Mexicanal • MTV Hits • Nick Music

Networks Participating in comScore Transparency Agreement to include VOD Viewing • A&E • ABC • ABC Family • AMC • Animal Planet* • BBC America • BET: Black Entertainment Television • Boomerang • Bravo • Cartoon Network/Adult Swim • CBS • CMT: Country Music Television • CNBC: Consumer News & Business Channel • CNN • Comedy Central • Discovery Channel* • Discovery Channel en Espanol* • Discovery Familia* • Discovery Family Channel* • Discovery Life* • Disney Channel • Disney Junior Channel • Disney XD • E! - Entertainment Television

• Esquire Network • FOX • Freeform • Fuse • FX Movie Channel • FX Network • FXX • Galavision • Game Show Network • Hallmark • History Channel • IFC • Investigation Discovery* • Lifetime • Logo • MTV: Music Television • MTV Classic • MTV Tr3s • MTV Live • MTV2 • National Geographic Channel • National Geographic Wild • NBC • Nick Jr.



• Nickelodeon/Nick-at-Nite • OWN • Oxygen • Science* • Spike TV • Sprout • SundanceTV • Syfy • TBS: Turner Broadcasting System • TeenNick • Telemundo

• TLC* • TNT: Turner Network Television • truTV • TV Land/TV Land Classic • Unimas • Univision (Broadcast) • UpTV • USA • Velocity* • VH1 • WeTV

Appendix G Demographic Mapping of Experian Coding


Appendix G – Demographic Mapping of Experian Coding The following table outlines comScore’s mapping of reported Experian Race/Ethnicity coding to our Race/Ethnicity demographic segments in TV Essentials and StationView Essentials.

Experian Code Experian Description comScore Reported Category 85 African American African American A1 African American (Arabic) African American A2 African American (Arabic) African American A3 African American (Arabic) African American A4 African American (Arabic) African American A5 African American (Arabic) African American D1 African American (Dutch) African American D2 African American (Dutch) African American D3 African American (Dutch) African American D4 African American (Dutch) African American D5 African American (Dutch) African American E1 African American (English) African American E2 African American (English) African American E3 African American (English) African American E4 African American (English) African American E5 African American (English) African American F1 African American (French) African American F2 African American (French) African American F3 African American (French) African American F4 African American (French) African American F5 African American (French) African American I1 African American (Irish) African American I2 African American (Irish) African American I3 African American (Irish) African American I4 African American (Irish) African American I5 African American (Irish) African American S1 African American (Scotch) African American S2 African American (Scotch) African American S3 African American (Scotch) African American S4 African American (Scotch) African American S5 African American (Scotch) African American W1 African American (Welsh) African American W2 African American (Welsh) African American W3 African American (Welsh) African American W4 African American (Welsh) African American W5 African American (Welsh) African American 8M Afrikaner African American 8S Akan African American



Experian Code Experian Description comScore Reported Category 9I Angolan African American 97 Batswana (Botswana) African American 8P Beninese African American 8Q Burkinabe (Burkina Faso) African American 9B Burundi African American 98 Cameroonian African American 8B Central African African American 9G Chadian African American 8O Comoran African American 8A Congolese African American 7B Djiboutian African American 9Y Equatorial Guinean African American 95 Ethiopian African American 9H Gabonese African American 9D Gambian African American 88 Ghanaian African American 9W Guinean (Guinea-Bissau) African American 8U Haitian African American 8X Hausa African American 9K Igbo African American 93 Ivorian (Ivory Coast) African American 8W Jamaican African American 86 Kenyan African American 8N Liberian African American 9R Malagasy (Madagascar) African American 82 Malawian African American 8V Malian African American 7G Mauritanian African American 92 Mozambican (Mozambique) African American 9A Namibian African American 8R Niger African American 87 Nigerian (Nigeria) African American 79 Rwandan African American 81 Senegalese African American 9T Sierra Leonean African American 9E Somali African American 9O Sotho (Lesotho) African American 83 Sudanese African American 8T Swahili African American 8I Swazi African American 9C Tanzanian African American 8C Togolese African American



Experian Code Experian Description comScore Reported Category 96 Ugandan African American 8K Xhosa African American 9L Yoruba African American 89 Zambian African American 99 Zimbabwean African American 8J Zulu African American 46 Afghan Asian 29 Armenian Asian 44 Azerbaijani Asian 48 Bangladeshi Asian 94 Bhutanese Asian 51 Burmese (Myanmar) Asian 9J Chechen Asian 53 Chinese Asian 27 Georgian Asian 7A Hindu Asian 65 Hmong Asian 50 Indian Asian 49 Indonesian Asian 57 Japanese Asian 45 Kazakh Asian 61 Khmer Asian 74 Kirghiz Asian 56 Korean Asian 60 Laotian Asian 59 Malay Asian 52 Mongolian Asian 7E Nepalese Asian 47 Pakistani Asian 63 Sri Lankan Asian 73 Tajik Asian 7D Telugu Asian 58 Thai Asian 8G Tibetan Asian 72 Turkmen Asian 64 Uzbek Asian 62 Vietnamese Asian 20 Hispanic Hispanic 21 Portuguese Hispanic 67 Aleut Other 8H Fijian Other 9N Filipino Other



Experian Code Experian Description comScore Reported Category 8F Guyanese Other 9Q Hawaiian Other 39 Native American Other 7H Native American Inuit Other 9X Papua New Guinean Other 8Y Pili Other 7F Samoan Other 91 Surinamese Other 80 Tongan Other 38 Albanian White 9M Algerian White 70 Arab White 11 Austrian White 8D Bahraini White 09 Belgian White 43 Bosniak White 71 Brazilian White 36 Bulgarian White 28 Byelorussian White 41 Croatian White 13 Czech White 03 Danish White 08 Dutch White 78 Egyptian White 01 English White 23 Estonian White 06 Finnish White 17 French White 10 German White 33 Greek White 68 Hebrew White 12 Hungarian White 07 Icelandic White 76 Iraqi White 15 Irish White 19 Italian White 66 Jewish White 32 Kurdish White 9U Kuwaiti White 24 Latvian White 77 Libyan White 25 Lithuanian White



Experian Code Experian Description comScore Reported Category 9F Macedonian White 7C Manx White 35 Moldovan White 84 Moroccan White 05 Norwegian White 34 Persian White 22 Polish White 8E Qatari White 37 Romanian White 30 Russian White 75 Saudi White 02 Scottish White 42 Serbian White 14 Slovak White 40 Slovenian White 04 Swedish White 18 Swiss White 9Z Syrian White 9P Tunisian White 31 Turkish White 26 Ukrainian White 16 Welsh White 9V Yemeni White

description of methodology - comscore · pdf filedescription of methodology i ... contents...

Documents