The Audience Loyalty Index is a proprietary statistical analysis that can provide one of many different variables used to determine the health and longevity of network television programs.
It was created by Michael Hinman, the founder of the BlipNetwork that runs Airlock Alpha, Inside Blip and Rabid Doll, and demonstrates through index form the percentage of a television show's overall audience for a season who remain loyal watchers week after week.
ALI is something not believed to be used by the networks, and is more of a way for fans to possibly get a better idea of how some shows may be perceived by the networks.
If the networks aren't using ALI, then why should I care?
Networks tend to pay attention to how much value they are receiving from a particular timeslot. Whether a show remains in the timeslot is the subject to many factors, including total audience, how much profit is being made from the show and if they can make more money by putting something else there, among dozens, if not hundreds, of other variables. One aspect that does come into play more often than not is how easy is it for the network to sell advertising for a show. The more stable an audience is for a show, the easier it is for a network to establish value.
Establish value? What do you mean?
Most commercial blocks are presold, some for a certain amount of weeks, some maybe a half season or all season. The networks sell advertising based on the projected number of viewers tuning in for a particular show. If a timeslot is sold for 5 million viewers, and only 3 million show up, networks have to then give up other paid commercial slots to provide "make-goods," that would help bring the advertiser up to the 5 million viewer mark. Make-goods are very costly, because many times, it will give an advertiser far more exposure than they would've received if a show had just met its audience quota, and the network cannot sell that spot to someone else. The more stable an audience is, the easier it is for a network to establish value and not have to jump through hoops because of spikes and valleys in viewership.
How do you come up with ALI?
The calculation itself is proprietary, but it really wouldn't take much for someone to reverse engineer it as we are writers and not mathematicians. It's basically comparing the highest overnight rating of a television show for the season against its average. This allows us to look at the total audience that has at least watched a program once, and determine what percentage of them are returning on a weekly basis.
Why do you use overnight ratings, and not final ratings?
Mostly because the BlipNetwork has always concentrated on overnight ratings anyway, because those are the first ratings that come out. And we know that on the Internet, it's all about instant news, and waiting a week for final numbers isn't exactly instant. At the same time, overnight ratings are the only ratings we can get timeslot-specific numbers for each and every day, thanks to the partnership between The Nielsen Co. and Zap2it. And no, we have no formal relationship with either company. Staying with one form of ratings allows us to make apples-to-apples comparisons. While there are some differences in ratings between overnight and final numbers, those changes are usually consistent, meaning that the ALI numbers, and how they might go up and down, also remain consistent despite using overnights.
Can ALI be used scientifically to tell if a show is going to be canceled or not?
No. There is no scientific way to do that. The decision to renew or cancel a show is the result of many, many, many variables, and are never just based solely on ratings. To even begin to try and make those predictions, we would need to know what the viewer threshold is for the network to be happy with the profit margin, and that's different for every single show, and can even change based on a number of factors. It can, however, provide some insight into the stability of a show's audience, and determine what at least one factor -- how easy is it to sell advertising and not have to provide make-goods -- that could be used to determine the fate of a show.
But don't most shows have big premieres and then audience drop offs? Won't that skew the numbers?
There will always be some skewing of numbers because television shows are not broadcast in a vacuum. If a network decides to play a new episode up against a one-time event, like say a presidential address, or a sporting event, numbers might be different. If Fox moves a show to right after "American Idol," like it did for "Fringe" one year, it also will provide some skewing of numbers based on such large lead-ins. Not all shows drop after the first episode. In fact, many shows can hit their high-points much later in the season, even new shows. Either way, audience retention is still an important factor in whether or not a show is successful in the network's perspective. So a show losing 30 percent of its premiere audience might skew an ALI, but losing 30 percent of its audience no matter what isn't something network suits take lightly.
Why not expand this to cable?
Right now, there are no outlets providing overnights on cable shows, or even final numbers that include all cable shows. We could try and do it for the top cable shows, but the system is far more effective when we can track as many shows as possible.
What shows are tracked anyway?
We track all the primetime, non-event/non-sports programming on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and The CW. We only do it season-by-season, although as more data accumulates over the years, we will have the ability to provide longer-term ALI ratings when needed.
Won't reruns screw this up?
No. ALI tracks only first-run episodes. We do not include rerun numbers of any kind in ALI.
How can I get an ALI rating of a certain show?
We are working on a system to provide some of these numbers whenever we mention shows on the BlipNetwork, but we aren't currently publicly releasing all the ALI ratings in a single package. However, if you are a news outlet and are interested in using ALI for a specific story, contact Michael Hinman directly at mhinman@airlockalpha.com and he would be happy to provide any available data. While the offer is made free of charge, we do ask that any usage of ALI outside of the BlipNetwork credit one of the BlipNetwork sites: Airlock Alpha, Inside Blip or Rabid Doll.
