How can I find Neilson TV ratings data?
Where can I find data on TV ratings?
Unfortunately, access to Neilson ratings is very limited. Neilson Media Company does not provide their data rankings and demographic information to anyone other than Neilson’s own clientele.
Fortunately, there are some resources at Mercer University as well as some freely available online that have published weekly numbers for Neilson ratings. However, it does require a bit more digging to get a complete picture.
The following resources publish Neilson ratings:
- ABI/INFORM Collection (ProQuest) – This database is useful for older Neilson ratings and you can limit it by date to find specific time periods. Perform a search with the keywords “neilson” and “ratings”
- The Futon Critic – Allows you to search ratings by date back to 2004.
- Neilson Top Ten – Only contains the top 10 shows for the current week
- TV Series Finale – Weekly TV ratings reports that go back to 2013
- Variety – Reports on weekly TV ratings that go back to the mid-1990s. Searching can be a bit difficult
- Hollywood Reporter – Search functionality is low, but they do have current TV ratings
