Portland Office 7700 NE Ambassador Place 3 rd Floor Portland, Oregon 97220 USA T +1 503 284 7581 Local TV Titling Rules September 2016 comscore Titling Task Force Recap On February 10-11, 2015, comscore met with representatives from several of the major broadcast networks, station groups and individual stations, representing both the national and local side of the industry. The meetings were held to gain a broader understanding of the importance of program titling and identify the areas where comscore needs to make strides in meeting the business needs of the industry in order to be used as currency in the marketplace. The meetings were very productive and highlighted several key areas where further review is required, and also areas where comscore can leverage an opportunity to offer valuable data that isn t currently available. On January 15, 2016, comscore regrouped with the local station group representatives of the Task Force to present our recommendations based on feedback from the original Task Force meetings. We received some additional guidance at that meeting and are now looking implement these changes starting with a soft release of exception flagging in broadcast September 2016, and a full release in January of 2017 once all of the thirdparty processors are on board. Going forward, yearly meetings will be held in first quarter with our client Task Force members to review recommendations for and changes to the rules. Any updates to the rules to come out of these meetings will be released prior to the upcoming fall season in broadcast September. Consistency In comscore s TV measurement system, it is necessary that the same program title be used from the local level up to the national level to accurately report a national program. Given this structural requirement, and in order to measure TV viewership as accurately as possible for all our clients, we are implementing several flagging options as an
alternative to the common practice of adding various suffixes to programs to indicate important program characteristics. To ensure the level of consistency in titling required for our TV measurement system to work as expected for both our local and national clients, comscore must establish guidelines related to prioritization of titling and flagging preferences, as well as define rules regarding the application of those flags. Program Titling Below are the general rules for series and episode titling. DEFINITION RULE Series Title Episode Title Series A series title must be consistent for every episode and telecast of that series. For example, the title The Blacklist will always be represented as The Blacklist, and not other variations such as Blacklist or Blacklist, The. Series titles must also be consistent across networks. In order to maintain the integrity of the data within comscore reports, there will be no exception codes or dates after the title of the series. These will be handled with series flagging (defined under Standard and Exception Flags). Examples that are not allowed: The Blacklist S, The Blacklist 11/4/15, The Blacklist USA, etc. An episode title must be consistent for every telecast of that episode. For example, the episode title in The Blacklist series of The Freelancer will always be represented as The Freelancer, and not other variations such as Freelancer or Freelancer, The. A series must have at least four produced episodes of the same program title name in order to qualify as a series. Titling Prioritization Below outlines the priority for program titling. PROGRAMMING RULE Network Local Affiliate Networks (broadcast rights owners) have titling priority over network programming and run times. Local stations have titling priority over locally produced and owned content, such as local news, news magazines, talk shows and local sporting events.
Direct Response & Paid Off-Net Syndication First-Run Syndication *Exception: Local sporting events that impact national reporting or national sports clients must be titled consistently with the national title for similar content. For example, a locally produced Yankees baseball game needs to roll up into the national baseball title of MLB Baseball. The owner of content, or their agent, will have priority over titling for Direct Response and Paid. Due to the title consistency constraints, network-originated programming will be reported with the original titles as provided by the originating network. For example, Friends (originally aired on NBC) will be titled Friends on all networks and stations airing that program. Due to the title consistency constraints, syndicated content will be reported with the original titles as provided by the syndicator. Standard Telecast/Series Flagging The following standard telecast and series flags are in place and currently available on some reports. comscore receives baseline flagging information from our schedule providers which is reviewed daily and edited as needed to ensure accuracy. FLAG DEFINITION PROGRAM EXCLUSIONS Series Premiere The first/initial produced episode of a series Series Finale Season Premiere Season Finale New Repeat The last/final produced episode of a series The first episode of a new season of a television series The final episode of a season of a television series The first/initial broadcast of an episode of a series Any broadcast of a series episode that is not New News, news magazine, movies, one-time events (e.g., sports, holiday specials)
Exception Flagging The exception flags enable clients to identify exceptions in programming and allow for exclusion from the program or series average (e.g. identifying that a newscast aired late or on a holiday when the rating would likely be skewed compared to a normal day). FLAG RULE DEFINITION Special - SP This flag may be applied to telecasts that are not part of regularly scheduled network programming, such as one-time only events, special events and live events which may be susceptible to schedule adjustments due to overruns. Sports events ( Super Bowl ), Live events ( Academy Awards ), Series airing outside of regular time period (excludes make-good airings). Holiday - H Delayed /Late Programmin g - L Off Air - Station - OA Off Air - Operator Specific- OO Technical Difficulty - TD Breakout B This flag may be applied to programs whose viewing will be subject to atypical viewing levels due to the observance of one of the accepted holidays. This flag may be applied if a program is delayed due to preceding program overruns, breaking news or technical difficulties. This flag may be applied when a station or network encounters a planned or unplanned break in broadcasting (periods of time with no programming, station dark). This flag may be applied when a station or network encounters a planned or unplanned break in broadcasting on a specific operator (i.e. station or network going dark on an operator due to contract dispute). This flag may be applied when a station or network encounters an unplanned/unexpected break in broadcasting quality (loss of audio, loss of picture). This flag may be applied when a program falls 10% or more from the usual national coverage due to a regional event, of some kind such as local storm coverage, etc. New Year s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year s Eve Program must be delayed by > 7 ½ minutes. Station/Network completely off air for all Operators and OTA for > 7 ½ minutes of flagged program Station/Network completely off air for a specific Operator for > 7 ½ minutes of flagged program Technical difficulty lasted for > 7 ½ minutes of flagged program Breakout programs air at their normal day and time, but there is a drop in coverage
Additional Flags DEFINITION Syndication Flag - Syn RULE The Syndication flag is an indicator that programming is either First- Run or Off-Net Syndication. Additional Program Titling Specific situations, definitions and rules for program titling outlined below. DEFINITION Series-related programming Block Schedule Foreign Language Titles Genre Identifiers RULE Recap/Preview or Special Edition series programming can be retitled. (For example, Empire Preview or Once Upon a Time Secrets of Storybrooke instead of the regular series title. The series can be titled by the network/station. (For example, Mystery Movie Block. ) The episode title can designate the content (in this example, the movie title.) Foreign language titles of English language speaking series will be titled with the original English language title. An area of opportunity for comscore requested by both groups was the request for more robust genre identifiers and genre reporting capabilities including extension to third-party processors. We are actively reviewing options for more efficient and complete genre identifiers. Availability/Visibility of Flags TV Essentials Current Status o Standard Flags (New/Repeat) o Visible only on the Telecast Summary o Filtering capability is present on the Program/Network Average, Series Summary, and Telecast Summary Users can filter to Exclude New, Exclude Repeat, Display Only New, Display Only Repeat o Exception Flags o Visible on the Program/Network Average and Telecast Summary o Filtering capability is available on also Program/Network Average, Telecast Summary, and Series Summary. Users can filter to Include Exceptions, Exclude Exceptions or Display Only Exceptions
StationView Essentials Current Status o Standard Flags (New/Repeat) o Visible in a column on the Telecast Ranker and Series Ranker reports at this time o Filtering capability Users can filter to Exclude New, Exclude Repeat, Display Only New, or Display Only Repeat o Exception Flags o Visible on the Telecast, Series and News Rankers and Report Builder o Filtering capability is available on the Telecast, Series and News Rankers and Report Builder Users can filter to Include Exceptions, Exclude Exceptions or Display Only Exceptions o Syndication Flag o Visible on the Telecast, Series and News Rankers o Filtering capability is available on the Telecast, Series and News Rankers Users can filter to Include Syndication, Exclude Syndication or Display Only Syndication TVE/SVE Requirements o Standard flags and exception flags should be visible on all reports o Standard flags and exception flags should be filterable on all reports Title Display in Third-Party Processors comscore has consulted with the third-party processors and has come up with the solution of concatenating the exception flags into the title field. For example, The Blacklist with a Special flag would be in the feed as The Blacklist (SP). This method allows for minimal negative impact on and minimal development work required for the third-party processors. The exception flags will be available through our third-party processors by January 2017. Editing and Turnaround Time To support an increased need for faster reporting, comscore needs any schedule edits, including post-air timing confirmations and last-minute programming changes (e.g. Special/Breaking News reports) submitted within 48 hours* after broadcast. Additional edits or flagging requests can be submitted up to 5 days after broadcast, but after that all schedule info will be considered "final. To this end, comscore is actively developing client portal solutions to serve as a quick, simple and efficient way for stations to directly
edit their program titles in accordance with our guidelines. Updates on this will be provided once a client portal implementation has been identified. *Updates for Friday, Saturday & Sunday should be reported to comscore on Monday (or first thing Tuesday morning, if Monday is a holiday). Summary comscore greatly appreciates our clients input as we move towards full implementation of these new titling and flagging conventions.