Nielsen ratings in the context of "NBC Sunday Night Football"

Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron) is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio broadcasting audiences. It was founded as the American Research Bureau in Beltsville, Maryland, by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with Los Angeles-based Coffin, Cooper, and Clay in the early 1950s. The company's initial business was the collection of broadcast television ratings.

The company changed its name to Arbitron in the mid‑1960s, the namesake of the Arbitron System, a centralized statistical computer with leased lines to viewers' homes to monitor their activity. Deployed in New York City, it gave instant ratings data on what people were watching. A reporting board lit up to indicate which homes were listening to which broadcasts. For years, Arbitron was a part of Control Data Corporation (CDC) and in 1992, it became a part of Ceridian Corporation before the company was split in 2001. The then-current Arbitron was formed from the renaming of the old Ceridian Corporation while the spin-off firm took the Ceridian Corporation name and acted as accounting successor.

Fox Broadcasting Company, LLC (commonly known as Fox; stylized in all caps) is an American commercial broadcast television network serving as the flagship namesake property of Fox Corporation and operated through Fox Entertainment. Fox is based at Fox Corporation's corporate headquarters at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, and it hosts additional offices at the Fox Network Center in Los Angeles and at the Fox Media Center in Tempe, Arizona. The channel was launched by News Corporation on October 9, 1986 as a competitor to the Big Three television networks, which are the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

Fox has gone on to become the most successful attempt at a fourth television network; it was also the highest-rated free-to-air network in the 18–49 demographic from 2004 to 2012 and 2020 to 2021 and was the most-watched American television network in total viewership during the 2007–08 season. It is a member of the North American Broadcasters Association and the National Association of Broadcasters. Unlike other major commercial broadcast networks, Fox does not have a newscast of its own due to its lack of a news division, and instead relies on its own 24-hour news channels, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and Fox Weather to supply news programming for the network.

Boston Legal is an American legal comedy drama television series created by former lawyer and Boston native David E. Kelley, produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television for ABC. The series aired from October 3, 2004, to December 8, 2008. The series stars James Spader, William Shatner and Candice Bergen. It is a direct spin-off and continuation of the TV series The Practice, with several characters from the eighth season of that series moving to Boston Legal. While never a Nielsen ratings smash hit, the show was critically acclaimed. It received 26 Primetime Emmy Awards nominations, including for Outstanding Drama Series in 2007 and 2008 and a Peabody Award in 2005.

I Love Lucy is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, with 180 half-hour episodes across six seasons. The series starred Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, along with Vivian Vance and William Frawley, and follows the life of Lucy Ricardo (Ball), a young, middle-class housewife living in New York City, who often concocts plans with her best friends and landlords, Ethel and Fred Mertz (Vance and Frawley), to appear alongside her bandleader husband, Ricky Ricardo (Arnaz), in his nightclub. Lucy is depicted trying numerous schemes to mingle with and be a part of show business. After the series ended in 1957, a modified version of the show continued for three more seasons, with 13 one-hour specials, which ran from 1957 to 1960. It was first known as The Lucille Ball–Desi Arnaz Show, and later, in reruns, as The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour.

I Love Lucy became the most-watched show in the United States in four of its six seasons and it was the first to end its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings. As of 2011, episodes of the show have been syndicated in dozens of languages across the world and remain popular with an American audience of 40 million each year. A colorized version of its Christmas episode attracted more than eight million viewers when CBS aired it in prime time in 2013, 62 years after the show premiered.

The Pittsburgh Media Market is part of the Greater Pittsburgh region. It is primarily a definition of the reach of the Pittsburgh television and radio media as defined by Nielsen in a prime sense. The area is actually smaller than the true area of Pittsburgh media reach, since many counties of east central Ohio and the West Virginia panhandle are served exclusively by some Pittsburgh affiliates though also having a few locally based network signals.

The Pittsburgh Media Market is officially defined as:

The Bold and the Beautiful (often referred to as B&B) is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. It premiered on March 23, 1987, as a sister show to the Bells' other soap opera The Young and the Restless; several characters from each of the two shows have crossed over to the other since the early 1990s. Set in Los Angeles, California, the show centers upon the Forrester family and their haute couture business.

The program features an ensemble cast, headed by its longest-serving actors John McCook as Eric Forrester and Katherine Kelly Lang as Brooke Logan. Since its premiere, the show has become the most-watched soap in the world, with an audience of an estimated 26.2 million viewers. As of 2010, it continued to hold on to the second-place position in weekly Nielsen Ratings for daytime dramas. The Bold and the Beautiful has also won 77 Daytime Emmy Awards, including three Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series, in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was an American professional wrestling promotion founded by Ted Turner in 1988, after Turner Broadcasting System, through a subsidiary named Universal Wrestling Corporation, purchased the assets of National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) territory Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) (which had aired its programming on TBS).

For all of its existence, WCW was one of the two top professional wrestling promotions in the United States alongside the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), at one point surpassing the latter in terms of popularity. After initial success through utilization of established wrestling stars of the 1980s, the company appointed Eric Bischoff to executive producer of television in 1993. Under Bischoff's leadership, the company enjoyed a period of mainstream success characterized by a shift to reality-based storylines, and notable hirings of former WWF talent. WCW also gained attention for developing a popular cruiserweight division, which showcased an acrobatic, fast-paced, lucha libre-inspired style of wrestling. In 1995, WCW debuted their live flagship television program Monday Nitro, and subsequently developed a ratings competition against the flagship program of the WWF, Monday Night Raw, in a period now known as the Monday Night War. From 1996 to 1998, WCW surpassed their rival program in the ratings for 83 consecutive weeks.

The Attitude Era was a major era of professional wrestling within the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), succeeding the New Generation Era. The Attitude Era was characterized by adult-oriented content, which included increased depicted violence, profanity, and sexual content, as well as disregarding the "good guys versus bad guys" formula in favor of unpredictable and shocking storylines, in a significant shift from the "traditional" and family-friendly output that the WWF had produced up until that point. The Attitude branding officially lasted from November 9, 1997 (at Survivor Series 1997) to May 6, 2002 (renaming of WWF to WWE), and was succeeded by the Ruthless Aggression Era.

The era was spearheaded during the Monday Night War when WWF's Raw went head-to-head with rival World Championship Wrestling's (WCW) Nitro in a weekly battle for TV ratings. As part of the change, the WWF also rebranded its flagship show (which became Raw Is War), redesigned the arena setups, and later introduced the "scratch" logo and officially referred to and promoted the "Attitude" name. The Attitude Era was a highly successful period for the company with television ratings, merchandise sales,and pay-per-view buy rates for the WWF reaching record highs and it also came at a time of a general shift in American television moving away from family-friendly to "edgier" content, with the WWF pushing the limits of what was deemed acceptable for TV. Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Sycho Sid and Stone Cold Steve Austin were among the wrestlers that ushered in the Attitude Era, with events such as Hart's explicit rant, the formation of D-Generation X and the Montreal Screwjob being key points of evolution to the Attitude format. However, Hart and Sid both left the WWF at the dawn of the era, and Michaels retired soon after.

Wagon Train is an American Western television series that aired for eight seasons, first on the NBC television network (1957–1962) and then on ABC (1962–1965). Wagon Train debuted on September 18, 1957, and reached the top of the Nielsen ratings. It is the fictional adventure story of a large westbound wagon train through the American frontier from Missouri to California. Its format attracted famous guest stars for each episode, appearing as travelers or residents of the settlements whom the regular cast encountered.

The show initially starred film actor Ward Bond as the wagon master (replaced after his death in 1960 by John McIntire) and Robert Horton as the scout (eventually replaced by Robert Fuller).