• by Wayne Friedman , January 27, 2010

Rentrak's "Stickiness Index" has been in operation for about six months, and the company says it continues to reveal value in TV shows not always pegged to traditional measures.

"We think it's a fair metric -- and allows you to look at a show beyond just high ratings," says Bruce Goerlich, chief research officer of Rentrak, who devised the measuring service last fall.

"One of the things I saw on the agency side was that engagement has some value. That the longer a person watched a program, even when controlling for exposure, the more likely they would recall the commercials," he said. "That's what 'stickiness' is: It's the percent of a program watched on an index basis."

Rentrak's "Stickiness Index" measures stickiness on a second-by-second basis. The index, which is part of its TV Essentials products, is the average percent of a program viewed, divided by the average percentage viewed for all programs of that duration: 30 minutes, 60 minutes or 120 minutes. "It's down into a very granular level," says Goerlich.

According to reports, Rentrak grabs data from some 4.5 million set-top boxes in 2 million AT&T U-verse TV homes. Rentrak does not comment about where it obtains its set-top data.

For media buyers and advertisers, the index can illustrate better value of some low-rated shows with a high stickiness index, says Goerlich. At the same time, it adds a high index to an already high-rated series, which can command even better premium pricing.

For instance, the program with the best stickiness also happens to be the show with the best ratings. The highest-rated TV series, Fox's "American Idol," scored an index of 206 for the week ending Jan. 17.

But in second place was a Lifetime Movie Network made-for-cable film "The Wrong Man," which had a 173 index. The movie ranked 130th place in ratings among all TV shows for that week. Third place went to Fox's "24" -- at a 170 index and a 20th place ranking among all TV shows.

Univision also scored particularly well for its novellas -- "En nombre del amor" (6th place, 155 index, and a 147 rating rank) and "Sortilegio" (9th place, 151 index, and a 135 rating rank).

Here is a list of the top 25 for the week of Jan. 11-17: