Study Of The Role Of Ratings In The Management Of The Television Programs

This thesis mainly focuses on rating's function in management and marketing of TV program. It is composed of the following parts such as foreword, the research intention, basic hypothesis, methodology of study, rating application and development in Mainland China, rating analysis application in TV stations, TV program evaluation system, conclusion and problems, relevant glossary and bibliography.With the development of reform and open to outside world, TV industry, as one of mass communication industries, developed very fast. Up to end of the year 2001,the TV coverage reached 94.1% in Mainland China, which has formed the largest audiovisual market all over the world. TV becomes part of daily life of ordinary Chinese people.In the present "eyeball" economy era, attention has been recognized as main target that various media aim at. TV industry faces many challenges from both outside and inside. For example, those challenges from outside include other electric wave media, press, outdoor, internet etc and those from inside show critical competition from other stations, channels, local channels and CCTV etc. After China's entry to WTO, though the domestic industry is not consented to be opened and at beginning of the first few years of the entry, foreign media giants will not be able to drive into media market of Mainland China and enjoy the "civil treatment", either. But in fact, TV industry belongs to Service Trade scope under WTO, and foreign media has been coveting Chinese media market for a long time and would like to take any kind of means to penetrate Chinese media industries including TV industry. Moreover, with the improvement of living standard and increase of leisure activities, the status of watching TV, which has ever been regarded as main activity in leisure time, is getting worse. Thus, it is a task for the TV station to keep its own audience and to enlarge its audience.TV stations make investment in buying or producing programs in order to attract more viewers, once they possess of outstanding programs, they are able to attract a large amount of audience, which will arouse the interests from ad agencies and ad investors who probably spend money to buy timeslots in order to carry out commercials campaign. Thus, TV stations can gain profits which help them to buy or produce more outstanding programs to draw more attention from the audience and able to build up their column and channel to a famous brand, and after all they can perform good enough in the sharp competitive media market.Then, what kind of measurement TV can accept stations, ad investors ad agencies to scale the quantity of audience of a channel, a program and a certain timeslot? ?Rating!What about the effects of post-broadcast? How many people have watched? What about response of audience? And how's the sales of commercial breaks? How's the experts evaluation? The above-questions indicate what the TV program makers mainly concern. Beyond all doubt, a set of accurate measuring evaluating system for program quality is desperately in need. Rating is, no doubt, the most important standard adopted, and heft of rating is considerable.One of main points of this essay will discuss is the trial of deepened analysis with marketing knowledge and statistic knowledge on rating on the base of data provide by authoritative survey organization, and then the way and thought of analysis could be useful for the personnel concerned to evaluating programs, programming and programs marketing.I am trying to design an program evaluation model according to my own experience and understanding of TV stations situations, and doing case analysis by rating and CAI to prove the model for program evaluation, which can help TV station review their programs and do the relevant marketing work.