As we are already aware, real-time ratings are no longer the "sole go-to standard" when it comes to determining whether a TV drama is considered popular or a hit in terms of viewership. Not only is this due to the variety of entertainment sources we get these days and changing content consumption habits from real-time viewing to on-demand which fits individual schedules, the phenomenon of "nagarami" (ながら見) is also an important factor that is not reflected in traditional real-time ratings tracking.
I'm sure many of us would have done this before - fiddling with our phones, doing something else such as eating or doing household chores while supposedly "watching TV". I admit that I do that quite a lot and sometimes have to backtrack when I miss important information along the way during the times when I get distracted from the TV screen. This happens quite a lot especially for variety shows where I don't keep my eyes glued on what's happening and just listens to the dialogue while looking up only if something catches my attention.
What this essentially means is that we are dividing our attention between the TV screen and whatever we are doing at the same time. As such, a TV show may see high viewership ratings but we are unable to judge if viewers are turning it on for the sake of having some background noise in the house or a habitual thing to do for some who turn on the TV as soon as they reach home. Considering that most if not all of us would pay full attention to something only if it truly interests us, the nagarami impact is a very important measure of viewer interest that has often gone unnoticed or not factored in during discussions of real-time or on-demand viewership.
The thing is, under traditional ratings monitoring, simply turning on the TV, choosing to let the TV show run in the background but actually not watching this is sufficient to create the false impression that a particular TV show is "popular". As such, REVISIO's technology to measure "eyeball time" or rather attention time is an interesting product which may be the way to go in time to come so as to give more context and meaning in the measurement of genuine interest and popularity of a TV show.
REVISIO's tracking system involves the attachment of a human sensor attached to the top of the TV screen which allows the identification of viewership data in households that can be attributed to individuals. Under traditional monitoring which tracks selection of shows via remote controls, it does not offer granular data on who (gender and age group), how many people in the household and for long they are watching the show. As such, even if the TV is set on a particular channel at a specific time, there is no information on who chose that, who was watching it and for how long. On the other hand, REVISIO allows tracking by the second and can even identify who is watching what and for how long. If the person in the household is simply sitting in front of the TV screen but his or her eyes are not watching the show, it will not be counted as viewership time. Since only pre-registered individuals in the household concerned will only be tracked, guests who visit the household won't be counted in the data.
The level of detail in the data allows the pin-pointing of which scenes, for how long was the viewer watching the show, who (gender, age group etc.) was watching what thus giving content creators and producers a better idea of what caught the viewers' interest and helps in shaping future production efforts. Advertisers can also get a better idea on the viewership numbers and plan their advertising budgets and plans accordingly. As for how the system determines what the viewer was watching, there is a sound recognition system which allows the identification of the TV show based on the audio. And unlike traditional tracking, this system enables the tracking of viewership not only on real-time broadcasts but also viewing through connected TVs to platforms like TVer, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
At the moment, REVISIO's website states that they have 2,000 households in the Kanto region and 600 in the Kansai region participating in the viewership monitoring which is expected to expand further. In contrast, Video Research has the following number of households participating in its viewership monitoring on a nationwide basis:
- Kanto region = 2,700
- Kansai region = 1,200
- Nagoya = 600
- Kitakyushu and Sapporo = 400 each
- Sendai, Hiroshima, Shizuoka, Nagano, Fukushima, Niigata, Okayama / Kagawa, Kumamoto, Kagoshima, Nagasaki, Kanazawa, Yamagata, Iwate, Tottori / Shimane, Ehime, Toyama, Yamaguchi, Akita, Aomori, Oita, Okinawa, Kochi, Miyazaki, Yamanashi, Fukui, Saga & Tokushima = 200 each
In order to get a better understanding of how both monitoring systems come up with vastly different results in terms of viewer interest and popularity, there have been some articles in the media discussing these differences.
For example, FRIDAY had an article analysing the first-episode real-time ratings of Summer 2024 dramas vs. the individual attention percentage data from REVISIO. The table above shows the top 15 titles based on REVISIO's data but the top 2 in terms of individual attention percentage were nowhere near the top 20 in terms of real-time ratings. Coincidentally or not, the top 2 were late-night dramas so it is to be expected that real-time ratings will definitely be much lower than primetime broadcasts. However, if people bother to stay up for the live broadcast or record the show for later viewing, it seems to suggest that there is a conscious effort made to watch the title. Perhaps this makes it understandable as to why the viewers paid more undivided attention while watching it.
In contrast, "Black Pean Season 2" may have secured the highest debut rating on real-time but the actual amount of time that people spent "looking" at the TV screen was just 66.4% and that's more than 15% lesser than the No.1 title "Anata no fukushuu, jikkyou shimasu!". "Umi no hajimari" may have gathered quite a bit of traction online in terms of being discussed on social media or its on-demand viewership numbers on TVer but REVISIO's data shows that actual attention time seems to be on the low side i.e. outside of the top 10. What this seems to suggest is that a drama may have high real-time ratings but whether viewers are actually devoting their attention to the TV or doing something else at the same time is something that needs to be looked into further.
The table also shows the individual attention percentage broken down into gender groups where some dramas had a much higher percentage in one gender group while some were roughly about the same. For example, the No.1 on REVISIO's table saw a 90.0% attention percentage in male viewers vs. 56.3% in female viewers but "Mountain Doctor" saw the reverse where 72.4% of female viewers paid attention to the show vs. 62.3% from male viewers. The most lopsided example in the table above should be "Kabe ni naritai otaku no atashi" which saw a high attention percentage of 93.5% in male viewers but a paltry 8.3% in female viewers. Given such trends, advertisers and content producers can then see who the core viewers are and adjust their offerings accordingly for the catchment target.
Looking at figures from another season i.e. Autumn 2024 published on MyNavi News, the table above shows REVISIO's data for the finale vs. the real-time ratings and the attention percentage for the first episode of these dramas. While the top 2 in terms of real-time ratings i.e. "Umi ni nemuru daiyamondo" and "The Travel Nurse" are also in the top 10 in terms of attention percentage, NHK's "3000-man" and "Sora wataru kyoushitsu" actually managed to hold the attention of the viewers much longer despite single-digit ratings below 5%. In a way, the low ratings are somewhat expected since you need to be a subscriber to access NHK's shows real-time compared to the other TV stations but there is another option for people to watch NHK's dramas on TVer nowadays anyway.
Another interesting thing to note is how some dramas managed to hold the attention of their viewers from start to finish vs. those which became more engaging later and those which made viewers lose interest. "3000-man" was tops in terms of its attention percentage for its first and final episodes while "Sora wataru kyoushitsu" surged from No.15 for its first episode to No.2 for its finale. In contrast, "Wakakusa Monogatari" slipped from No.3 for its first episode to No.17 by the time it ended.
In terms of the gender preferences, the top 3 most attention-grabbing dramas for male viewers were "3000-man", "Umi ni nemuru daiyamondo" and "Tamiou R" while the ladies preferred "3000-man", "Sora wataru kyoushitsu" and "Lion no kakurega". This seems to suggest that "3000-man" is a crowd favourite across the board just like "Umi ni nemuru daiyamondo" which saw a small difference of 0.3% only between both genders.
It will probably take a longer time of monitoring and comparison of the results from both measurement systems to gain a more meaningful conclusion and observe any prevalent trends. However, given the data which has been shared thus far, it does show that there is indeed a difference between just turning on the TV and actually watching the show. While I think REVISIO's system has the potential of taking out the nagarami factor out of the measurement of a drama's actual popularity and interest level, their sample size is still somewhat small and restricted in terms of geographical reach. As such, it will be worth paying attention to how these differences will play out in future and shape the consensus on what it truly means to be a hit drama - is it going to be real-time ratings, on-demand viewership or actual attention percentage, a mix of these parameters or one aspect going to be weighted more than the others?
