• Current Public Media, Wednesday, July 7, 2010 12:05 AM

Stirrings of audience life in multicast channels may explain why the national Nielsen ratings acquired by PBS have been rising, even though local Nielsen numbers are still generally slipping. Multicast channels such as Create, World, V-me and some locally packaged channels tend to have no measurable audience or a fraction as many viewers as the largest PBS channel in town. But small increments from two or three additional channels per market could mount up quietly, given that most stations don't see the data because they'd have to pay extra to Nielsen.

Back in November, when only about six stations were buying ratings for their multicast channels, they were adding an average of 28% to the main channel's weekly cume, TRAC calculates. The gain is good news for public TV if -- like Discovery and other big multichannel cable programmers -- PBS can recapture some of their viewers who are dispersing to other channels.

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