During the past few weeks, after reading about them in the press and being urged by friends, I finally got around to watching American Pickers and Pawn Stars, a pair of History documentary reality TV series based around the business of buying and selling antiques and collectibles. Both shows are part of a virtual explosion of reality series airing new episodes this summer. Predictably, though, much of this programming is designed to replicate successful themes and formats. For instance, American Pickers and Pawn Stars combine the BBC’s and PBS’s long-running Antiques Roadshow collectibles appraisal format with the spectacle, humor, and adventurous spirit of the many extreme and/or bizarre jobs reality series, ranging from Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers to American Choppers and Miami Ink/LA Ink. (Other recent collecting-themed reality series like A&E’s Hoarders focus on compulsive behavior, and thus more closely resemble the various human freak show-style reality shows.)

Pawn Stars was the first of this pair to reach the air, debuting back in July 2009. Already in its third season, the series centers around the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, owned and operated by three generations of the Harrison family. The setup is simple: customers bring in items to sell or pawn, the staff appraises them and/or calls in an expert to do so, and then they haggle over the price. The emphasis is on unique artifacts – vintage toys, weapons, Word War II memorabilia, rare coins, et al (as opposed to more commonly pawned items like jewelry or electronics) – and during the appraisal process some historical knowledge is always revealed. Americans Pickers, which only premiered in January but is already in its second season, follows a similar format, except rather than have the customers come to them, the show’s protagonists, Iowans Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz (pictured above), go to the customers. Travelling the country, the Pickers – named that because, unlike an antique dealer in a shop, they scrounge through junk heaps and people’s homes to “pick” out rare items that they then resell to dealers or collectors – spend most of their time on back roads and farms. Indeed, both shows seem very calculated in their attempts to cultivate blue-collar appeal: they’re set in middle America; the Pawn Stars and Pickers mainly purchase everyday and pop culture type objects; and the guys even look like average Joes (they all ride motorcycles, to boot).

The two shows have been ratings successes. When it debuted in January, American Pickers had the most-watched History series premiere since Ice Road Truckers in 2007. Back in June, the Monday night block of Pawn Stars and Pickers attracted the History network’s largest audience ever. But the shows haven’t been without controversy either, especially Pickers. Just do a little Googling and you’ll quickly find viewers reviling Mike and Frank for taking advantage of the elderly and others who have saved these collectibles for a lifetime but have little to no idea about their monetary value. Those within the antiques community, including none other than John Fiske, have also taken issue with the duo’s ethics and their role in buttressing the public perception of antique dealers as rogues and thieves. (Pawn Stars seems to escape these criticisms because the owners are always the ones bringing the objects to the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop looking for a payday.)

While those are intriguing points to consider, I find it particularly interesting that these shows about antiques and collectibles are emerging and prospering during a period of economic recession. The value of the objects featured in the shows frequently run into the thousands and even tens-of-thousands of dollars, and it seems hard to believe that there are many people out there actively buying up such high-priced collectibles right now. Indeed, the Pawn Stars and the Pickers are middle men in all of this; the collectors who purchase this stuff from the pawn shop and the Antiques Archaeology store are never seen, even though we are assured that they are out there. Nevertheless, I believe the audience interest in these shows is driven less by a desire to be a collector and buy these collectibles than it is to sell them. At a time when so many Americans are losing money and cutting back, it is reassuring to see that our junk really might be gold.

Indeed, the type of collectibles featured in these shows does not resemble what most people think of when they think of antiques. That is, these are not Tiffany lamps, Fabergé eggs, or Chippendale furniture, but rather motorcycles, toys and games, folk art, tools, advertising signs, and other industrial and mass-produced goods primarily from the recent past. In other words, these are the type of things that most average Americans or their families either own, at some point owned, or very well could own and not even know it (who knows what grandma has stashed away in the attic?!). Shows like Pawn Stars and Pickers give us hope that all the stuff we’ve been collecting and saving might actually have more than sentimental value, and might help get us through these tough times. I doubt I’m the only one who has dug through the basement late on a Monday night, thinking, “Hey, I have one of those!”

In 2008, after some substantial acquisitions on the European television audience measurement front, Nielsen proudly informed its clients that it now controlled three quarters of the world’s television currency data.  But again, traditional television ratings represent only the tip of the iceberg for a company that is also a primary source of information about video sales (Nielsen VideoScan), book sales (Nielsen BookScan), video game sales (Nielsen Games), music consumption (Nielsen SoundScan), newspaper audiences (Scarborough Research), mobile device usage (Nielsen Mobile Media) and Web traffic (Nielsen NetRatings).  Nielsen has even begun competing head to head with Arbitron in the measurement of radio audiences (Nielsen Radio Audience Measurement).

And yet there remain many more media audiences – or at least aspects of these audiences –  to capture.  Today, Nielsen’s growth involves expansion across three dimensions.  The first is geographic.  For instance, Nielsen now provides television audience data in over 30 countries around the world.  The company’s NetRatings service has established panels and site-centric measurement systems in countries around the world, to the extent that Nielsen now claims to monitor 90 percent of global Internet activity.

The second dimension involves expansion across platforms.  One of Nielsen’s most significant ongoing initiatives is the development of its Anytime, Anywhere Media Measurement (A2/M2) system, which seeks to provide comprehensive audience data integrated across the “three screens” (television, computer, mobile device) by which the bulk of electronic media consumption takes place.  Nielsen also measures audiences for what it calls the “fourth screen” – location-based video outlets such as those found in health clubs, bars, gas stations, and elevators. As new media platforms enter the mediascape, Nielsen is there.

And the third, and perhaps least discussed, involves expansion across the criteria by which audiences are valued.  That is, today, buying media audiences has become about much more than simply buying audience exposure. Data on the size and demographics of the audience that consumed a particular piece of media content represent only scratches the surface of audience understanding in today’s rapidly changing media environment.  Today, advertisers and marketers also want information about how engaged those audiences were, how well they recalled what they consumed, and how their behaviors were affected (to name just a few of the emerging currencies).

Nielsen is continuing to expand to meet these demands as well.  For instance, Nielsen recently invested in a firm called NeuroFocus, which specializes in applying brainwaves research to the analysis of advertising and content effectiveness.  And just this month, Nielsen acquired an online audience measurement firm called GlanceGuide, whose primary product is an “attentiveness score” for online video content.  Nielsen IAG measures the extent to which television audiences recall the details of the programs they watched.  And Nielsen BuzzMetrics measures how much online conversation is taking place about various media products – both in advance of and after they are released.

The obvious question that arises from this scenario is whether it is a good or a bad thing for one firm to play such a dominant role in the construction of media audiences.  Even Congress has looked into this question.  I’m not going to try to answer the question of whether this situation is good or bad.  It’s too big a question to try to answer here. But what I will say is that this situation may very well be inevitable.  Media companies and advertisers hate uncertainty, and what a sole audience measurement service provides is a bit less uncertainty. Competing providers means competing – often contradictory – numbers.  And such contradictions equal uncertainty.  This isn’t to say that Nielsen’s numbers are necessarily right.  But as long as everyone involved chooses to treat them as right, uncertainty is reduced.  Such are the somewhat bizarre machinations of the audience marketplace.

Amidst all the record industry’s doom and gloom over digital piracy and declining CD sales, there has been one largely overlooked area of the market that’s actually been experiencing tremendous growth in recent years, and that’s vinyl. That’s right: phonograph records, that analog sound recording format that has been declared dead more times than film criticism. The reality is that vinyl – the primary commercial music medium for most of the 20^th century – never went away, even though it left the mainstream in the early 1990s, replaced by digital media (first CDs, then MP3s). It has remained a staple of the rock music underground, as well as the preferred format of most serious record collectors and audiophiles. The Internet-fueled “digital music era,” however, has sparked a new wave of interest in this old medium, some even predicting that vinyl will eventually replace CDs as the physical music media of choice.

According to Nielsen SoundScan, sales of vinyl albums in the U.S. increased by 33% in 2009, to approximately 2.5 million copies. The major labels have started pressing vinyl again for the first time in roughly a decade. It is estimated that half of all new albums are being released with a vinyl counterpart. Still, digital music dominates sales and vinyl remains a niche item: digital track and album purchases, which were also up in 2009, account for nearly 80% of total music sales, while vinyl represents less than 1%. In other words, no one is suggesting that vinyl is about to replace digital music, only the CD. But the record industry – by which I mean not only the record labels but also retailers, distributors, manufacturing plants, et al. – very much needs physical objects to sell, hence its renewed commitment to vinyl.

Enter Record Store Day, which is taking place today, April 17^th, at indie record shops across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and other countries. An annual “holiday,” now in its third year, RSD claims as its mission the “celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 1,400 independently owned record stores worldwide.” By all means this is an industry event, organized by the Music Monitor Network, a coalition of music retailers, labels, and distributors, and the Alliance of Independent Media Stores and the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. It is also sponsored by the music trade association NARM, consumer electronics manufacturer Crosley Radio, and the nation’s largest music distributors (RED, Fontana, EMI, WEA, Universal – all of which are attached to the four major labels: Sony, Universal, Warner, EMI). There are plenty of independent record labels throwing their weight behind RSD, too, ranging from big names like Sub Pop and Matador to smaller ones such as Jagjaguwar and No Idea. But it’s particularly interesting (to me, anyway) that the majors are so closely involved in an event that is designed to celebrate independent retailers and which, based on the artists participating in RSD live events and those issuing special RSD releases, centers almost exclusively around what would be broadly termed “indie rock” music and culture.

Indeed, the bait used to actually lure customers into shops on Record Store Day, apart from discounts in some venues, are in-store performances and exclusive releases. For instance, this year Smashing Pumpkins, Yo La Tengo, and No Age are among those artists performing in stores, while musicians including The Rolling Stones, Beastie Boys, Bruce Springsteen, Devo, Sonic Youth, and Pavement are offering special limited edition releases. The way these artists and record companies have rallied around RSD, though, seems to indicate that this phenomenon is less about record stores than it is about saving records, period. And not just any records, either, but vinyl records.

The “unique culture” that Record Store Day claims to be commemorating is, quite specifically, vinyl culture. The aforementioned exclusive Record Store Day releases – some 170 in total – are, with a few exceptions, all vinyl. Indeed, a trip this morning to some local participating record shops in Madison, WI, confirmed that a majority of the customers, at least in the opening hours, were dedicated record collectors quickly dropping in and out to pick up the limited edition vinyl pressings. Surely, the record stores are profiting from the increased traffic (at last year’s RSD, indie retail sales grew 21% from the prior year), but most of those sales would appear to be coming from already dedicated consumers  (read: record collectors) who are just looking to get their hands on exclusive releases (read: catnip for record collectors).

That is, stores are milking their base – and there’s nothing wrong with that. Record stores need to sell records – physical products – to stay in business, and record collectors, particularly those in the rock/indie/punk/whatever-you-want-to-call-it underground, buy lots of records and they mostly buy vinyl. This is hardly news to the mom-and-pop record shops, as it has been their primary market all along, nor is it news to the indie labels or artists. But the major record companies seem to finally be realizing the value of this niche audience, too. Indeed, the major labels (and their distributor subsidiaries, which handle loads of smaller indie labels) need more than anyone else for physical records to survive. And increasingly that means supporting vinyl culture: the vinyl format itself, as well as the independent shops that sell it and the small but committed audience that buys it. Record Store Day might just as well be called Vinyl Record Day.

Certainly, it would be ludicrous to say that something’s popular if nobody’s watching. And given how well NCIS, House, and Grey’s Anatomy have been doing in the ratings, for instance, it would be silly to say they’re unpopular.

But popularity is also about cultural salience, about a show’s place in popular culture, and about whether it really matters to people. Let’s use restaurants and eating out as an analogy. I often get my lunch at the Quizno’s opposite Vilas Hall, where I work. So if Nielsen were “rating” my lunch consumption, Quizno’s would be the equivalent of Sunday Night Football or American Idol. But I don’t particularly care for Quizno’s, and I enjoy many other places more. If you asked me which places I love, I wouldn’t list it. And in ten years time, if you ask what was a “popular” place to eat lunch in Madison in 2009, I doubt that I’d leap to listing Quizno’s, even though the line is always long when I’m there.

If Sunday Night Football is Quizno’s, some of those places I prefer may be like The Daily Show. Here’s a show that gets relatively low ratings (Melrose Place is the only primetime network show that consistently gets less viewers than TDS) but owns a specific moment in television. Or think of seminal shows like The Sopranos, Sex and the City, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer that similarly received relatively low viewer numbers, yet were hugely popular.

Why is this a pet peeve? It comes up when discussing “quality television,” and a quick recrimination is that scholars only pay attention to those shows that we as academics like. The recrimination can at times suggest that we should go write more books about NCIS or Two and a Half Men (or at the first Flow conference, I think it was JAG and Everybody Loves Raymond), and we’re made to feel guilty for caring in our nasty bourgeois hegemon kind of way about The Wire, and then we feel better about ourselves because we’ve restored our sense of what truly is popular. Now, I don’t want to be too harsh in criticizing this, since clearly media studies does need to wrestle with why so many people watch such shows, and with the meanings inherent. I yield that point. But to say we should study them shouldn’t require giving up on the other shows, nor need we assume that shows with better ratings truly are “more popular”. They may just be Quizno’s.

Sometimes the most popular shows have smaller viewer numbers. All of which points to a ratings pet peeve to discuss later, namely that Nielsen measures who is watching not why they’re watching and how much they love what they’re watching.

With the first sweeps weeks of the television season now behind us, the numbers suggest that it was a pretty lousy month. Indeed, far more shows experienced their lowest ratings of the season than did better.

The only real winners (with rise over previous high for the year in 18-49 rating and total viewers, in millions, in brackets) were Sunday Night Football (1.3/4.2), Football Night in America (0.4/1.26), the Dancing with the Stars finale (1.1/5.12), Law and Order (0.3/0.81), and 60 Minutes (0.2/2.31). Brothers had a great night (1.3/2.9), then plummeted back to its usual depths. Other shows with tiny upticks include, CSI, The Big Bang Theory, The Mentalist, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Bones, America’s Next Top Model, How I Met Your Mother, 2 and a Half Men, Smallville, One Tree Hill, Survivor, Numb3rs, Supernatural, Castle, 20/20, Vampire Diaries.

Compare that to big losses for (with drop under previous low for the year in 18-49 rating and total viewers, in millions, in brackets) V (1.9/4.87), American Dad (1/1.67), Family Guy (0.7/1.49), The Cleveland Show (0.6/1.47), Flash Forward (0.4/0.88), Fringe (0.4/0.71), Criminal Minds (0.3/1.43), The Simpsons (0.3/0.51), America Funniest Home Videos (0.3/0.53), and Private Practice (0.3/0), and smaller downticks for NCIS: LA, Jay Leno (every night), The Good Wife, Trauma, CSI: New York, Heroes, Community, Melrose Place, CSI: Miami, Gossip Girl, 90210, Medium, 30 Rock, Hank, Mercy, NCIS, Supernanny, New Adventures, Gary Unmarried, Lie to Me, Ugly Betty, and Desperate Housewives.

This last Wednesday was a killer for Modern Family, Cougar Town, The Middle, Eastwick, Glee, and So You Think You Can Dance, though that’s usual for the night before Thanksgiving, so I’m told.

I’m wondering if this is a sign of a bad year, or whether the sweeps have finally become truly irrelevant, as Nielsen introduces more boxes into local markets and phases out the journals. Or maybe a little bit of both?

Today’s pet peeve: how some pop critics and observers try to read cable news ratings as a sign of which political philosophy is in the ascendancy, or even of which outlet is trusted.

This pet peeve plays itself out weekly on a blog I read, TV By the Numbers. They plot pundit ratings against each other, in particular Bill O’Reilly vs. Keith Olbermann, or simply Fox News vs. MSNBC. Inevitably, O’Reilly and Fox News get better numbers, and here’s where the problems start. Some people in the comments see this as a sign that Americans think Fox is the best source for news; and some see it as a sign that America’s a right leaning nation. Many do so with relish, as right-wingers, though some lefties do so with angst and despair too.

This is really, profoundly bad math. Let’s back up a second and look at some numbers. America is supposed to have a population of 307 million. Of those, on Thursday Nov 12th, 2.724 million were watching Fox News in prime time, so say the folks at Nielsen, 962,000 were watching MSNBC, 868,000 were watching CNN, 630,000 were watching HLN, and 348,000 were watching CNBC.

I get it: Fox does way better than the other news channels (about as well as all of them combined, in fact). And I’m not going to try to use numbers to suggest they don’t. But to make the leap from that to saying it’s a right-leaning nation, or that the nation trusts Fox best is to accept, first, that everyone watching likes what they’re watching (Ratings Pet Peeve #1, if you’re counting). Second, it assumes that everyone watching agrees with its politics (or, in some versions of the tale, that everyone watching feels it has no politics, only pure objectivity). But even if we grant both of those specious assumptions, it then assumes – and here’s the clincher – that 0.87% of the population speaks for the entire nation.

There are many reasons why Fox News might be doing better, and its successful harnessing of populist discourse is surely one of them. Maybe, just maybe, it is also because this is a right-leaning nation that trusts Fox News implicitly in all things. But the numbers don’t prove any of that. They’re just stabs in the dark, as though I took Titanic‘s and Finding Nemo‘s box office success as signs that Americans love nautical-themed epics above all others.

Indeed, if we now want to play with other numbers, let’s look at how Greater New York City voted in 2008. Counting New York (Manhattan), Queens, Kings (Brooklyn), and Bronx counties, along with Bergen and Hudson counties in NJ, and Westchester county in NY, yet without counting Richmond county in NY (Staten Island, ‘cause who counts Staten Island? Really??), 2,978,350 people voted for Obama. So more people voted for Obama in a single metropolitan area than watch Fox News in the entire country on an average night.

Remember that when you hear Fox or its supporters trumpet their success as a sign of anything political. Bottom line: Fox is a ratings king in cable news-ish stuff. But lest we are ready to all hail President Meredith Grey and Vice President Peter Griffin, let’s please not assume that ratings trends are clear signs of a nation’s politics.