Real-Life Math
Michele Paris is the program coordinator for a public television station. She says the math that TV programmers use is not complicated. Still, you should be comfortable with figures. "You need the ability to read a budget and to put together budgets," she says.
Television programmers must also be able to work with and understand audience numbers. Dorothy Hamilton is in charge of research and special projects at a television station. She constantly studies audience levels.
She says television programmers must know how to access audience numbers, understand the definitions that come with the numbers and understand the relationships between those numbers.
"As a programmer, you have to be able to look at the numbers and gather conclusions," she says. The math itself is not complicated, she says. "The detail comes in the accuracy of the definitions."
Here are two terms that you will hear often -- rating and share. Both are percentages, but they are measuring different things. A rating point represents 1 percent of the population being measured. A share represents 1 percent of the available viewing audience watching a particular show.
You are the program coordinator of a television schedule. The target audience that you want to attract is people between 18 and 24 years old. The total population of people between 18 and 24 years old in your coverage area is 150,000.
You schedule a program called Buddies to run on Monday nights between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Only half of the entire target population is watching at that time. The show earns 12 points.
How many people between the age of 18 and 24 were watching? What was the 18-to-24 share?