Visual Thinking Assignment USA TV Network Renewal Decision

Visual Thinking Assignment
USA TV Network Renewal Decision Visualisation
Anna Thalassinos
Walter Khumalo
thlann002@myuct.ac.za
khmwal002@myuct.ac.za
Contents
1.
Introduction.................................................................................................................................... 3
2.
Overview and analysis of related work ..................................................................................... 6
3.
Visual Queries............................................................................................................................. 10
4.
Design .......................................................................................................................................... 10
5.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Design .................................................................................... 24
6.
Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 24
7.
Future work ................................................................................................................................. 24
8.
Work Allocation ........................................................................................................................... 25
2
1. Introduction
1.1.
Problem Description
In the United States of America, television is a massive industry, with 99% of households
owning a TV set [1]. There are a number of broadcast networks in the USA which purchase
television shows from production companies and air them for public viewing. Towards the
end of each television season, networks need to decide whether to renew or cancel a
particular series depending on the amount of money a show generates for the network. This
value is primarily due to the advertising revenue that the series brings in. Advertisers are
willing to spend large sums of money to advertise to specific demographics who watch a
series.
There is a wealth of data that needs to be analysed in order for a renewal decision to be
made regarding a series. This report proposes a visualisation of all of this data in order to
allow rapid processing of all of the relevant information to facilitate accurate TV series
renewal decisions.
For the purpose of this report, the term “series” refers to a television program and the term
“season” refers to an order of episodes of a series. The terms “series” and “show” are used
interchangeably in this document. Series usually air from the Fall – Spring (henceforth
referred to as the Winter television season), or Spring – Fall (henceforth referred to as the
Summer television season).
A season may have any number of episodes, generally between 13 and 24. The network
decides on the size of the episode order based on the series’ performance.
A particular series generally airs during the same season each year if renewed, although the
network may move it to a different season if it is not performing well in its current season.
The network may also decide to change the day a series airs or the time slot in which it airs.
The visualisation needs to support visual queries which correspond to the questions
mentioned above.
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1.2.
Data
Currently, the most important consideration for networks is the ratings a show receives, as
measured by USA information and measurement company, Nielsen. Nielsen, however only
monitors a small subset of the population’s viewing, via set top boxes [2]. The viewership
numbers reported by these Nielsen top boxes is therefore not representative of the true
popularity of the show and in past years have resulted in shows with large cult followings
being cancelled because of bad numbers. It has since been acknowledged that the true
value of a show should not be assessed merely in terms of how many “eyeballs” the show
has, but how the audience engages with the show. That is, is the television just on, or is
someone actually watching the show and engaging with it. Nielsen and TV networks have
begun to realise the importance of social networking as a better indication of a show’s value
[3]. This social activity surrounding a show is termed “social buzz”. This visualisation
therefore incorporates the series’ social buzz to represent the show’s total popularity.
“Syndication” is an important term in the television industry. When a show has aired between
eighty eight and one hundred episodes, the network may sell the rights of the series so that
it may air on any channel (five or more times per week)[4]. This is referred to as syndication.
Syndication is desirable because it allows a show to continue making money even once
production on the show has ended (if the show is cancelled). Networks like to get their
shows to syndication, therefore proximity to syndication is something that they take into
consideration when making renewal decisions. For example, if a show is performing poorly
but has 75 episodes, then giving the show a 13 episode order will get the show into
syndication.
This visualisation will include the following data:
•
Series name
•
Network name
•
Day aired
•
Timeslot aired
•
Genre
•
Season aired (Summer/Winter)
•
Nielsen number of viewers (total for the current season – all episodes added up,
regardless of age group)
•
Social Buzz (Twitter and Facebook posts)
•
Number of episodes (proximity to syndication)
•
Renewal Status (cancelled/renewed/pending)
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For the purposes of this design, data was manually collected. The data is dispersed across
various sources, which makes manual gathering laborious. Therefore we have restricted the
data to five networks in the USA (ABC, NBC, The CW, Fox and CBS) and our four favourite
genres (Crime, Comedy, Sci-fi and Reality).
Nielsen makes the ratings information available to networks, advertisers and media who in
turn make some of this data available to the public via online articles. The validity of the data
in these articles cannot be determined. Ideally, the data should be bought directly from the
Nielsen company. Social buzz numbers are provided by Mashable [5].
The output is essentially the visualisation into which all of the data mentioned above is
encoded graphically. The only processing of data is the calculation of the size of the shape,
based on viewership numbers and social buzz.
1.3.
Target User Profile
The primary users of the visualisation are the network executives at television networks in
the United States of America. We therefore assume familiarity of network terminology
(syndication, season etcetera) as well as knowledge of who their network’s competitors are
(that is, they know which network they should select from the drop-down boxes for
comparison). We also assume that the executive is familiar with the shows on their own
network as we use the logos of the shows in order to help the user identify what they are
looking for.
Although the visualisation proposed by this project is targeted at network executives, it might
also be valuable to fans of television shows so that they can see ahead of time how their
favourite show is doing in order to assess the likelihood of cancellation. People become
consumed with television series and their characters and when the season comes to an end
they are desperate to know whether their favourite shows have been renewed for another
season, thus the visualisation can help set their minds at ease.
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2. Overview and analysis of related work
There is no indication of whether there is a visualisation that networks use to analyse and
compare the performance of television series in order to make the renewal decisions. There
are a number of informal visualisations relating to social buzz and ratings of TV shows
online. These have been created by fans and infographic companies. Some examples are
outlined below:
(Source: http://pinterest.com/pin/72550243967440446/)
The above graphic shows social buzz per network for a year. Although the main shows
contributing to a networks total are mentioned, a network would be more interested in seeing
exactly how each show on the network contributes to this social buzz total. The series
names written alongside the chart makes the graphic quite cluttered.
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(Source: http://www.throng.co.nz/files/u2/american-2009-season-ratings.gif)
The graphic above uses red circles to represent the number of viewers of a series’ first
episode of the season. The burgundy circle represents the average number of viewers for all
episodes that have aired. It does not distinguish between networks and also does not
include social buzz and other necessary data such as number of episodes and genre. The
primary visual query above is “is the average number of viewers for a series for the season
more than or less than the number of viewers for the premiere of the season?”. This is not
really an indication of what should be renewed and what should be cancelled.
(Source: http://adage.com/article/the-media-guy/inside-social-media-triumph-nbc-svoice/228534/)
The graphic above shows the tweet volume for one episode of American Idol and one
episode of The Voice. This is not a particularly interesting visualisation as it is simply a
horizontal bar chart displaying the tweets relating to a show for one episode. It does not
include any information about ratings or other important data need to make decisions.
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(Source: http://mashable.com/2013/01/14/social-media-tv-chart-1-14/)
The social media statistics as represented by Mashable above is more useful as it ranks
shows according to their popularity on social networks, indicates which show the network
belongs to and also shows whether the buzz was predominantly positive or not. It is not very
visual though. Additionally it only shows the top ten shows according to social buzz whereas
a network executive would like to see all shows on their network. It also does not show
ratings.
For fans to monitor which of their favourite shows are likely to be renewed, many TV
blogging sites maintain score cards. Once such scorecard is represented below:
http://tvline.com/2013/01/04/tv-shows-renewed-cancelled-2013-abc-nbc-cbs-fox-cw/
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It would be useful to have the information represented graphically so that fans are able to
look at it and will immediately be able to see what has been renewed/cancelled without
doing much reading.
The infographic presented alongside
is a far more detailed visualisation
which provides information about
social buzz relating to television
shows. The last visualisation at the
bottom of the image is particularly
visually appealing. It even uses
colours and symbols to distinguish
between genres (see the key). It also
varies the thickness of the lines
according to how many social
comments there were per episode.
Once again, not all series are
represented and networks of the
series are not mentioned either.
(Source: http://pinterest.com/pin/72550243968196151/)
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This analysis of related work indicates that although there are visualisations relating to TV
shows social buzz and ratings, these visualisations are dispersed. There is no visualisation
that encodes all of the relevant information for decision making.
3. Visual Queries
The main objective of the visualisation is to allow the user to look at it and be able to decide
relatively quickly which shows are worth renewing for another season and which shows have
run their course. This is done by comparing a show with other shows on the same network
or with its competitor shows on a different network. There are a number of small visual
queries which, combined, allow for the answering of the most important query which is:
•
Which shows should be cancelled and which shows should be renewed?
This decision cannot be made without considering a number of variables, therefore there
need to be visual queries to support comparison of these variables. An effective visualisation
would therefore allow for comparison between shows on different networks, different
seasons and days.
Some smaller queries that aid overall renewal decision are:
•
If I move Show A to a different night/timeslot/season, what will its competition be?
•
How popular is Show A compared to other shows in a genre on other networks?
•
How many episodes should the show be renewed for, if renewed? Just enough to get
it into syndication maybe?
4. Design
There were a number of iterations of design, as well as two crit sessions with feedback.
Although the networks and series used in the designs are real, their viewership numbers and
details are fictitious.
The rough sketches of our initial designs as well as detailed descriptions of the two final
designs, are discussed in this section.
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4.1.
Initial Designs
After a meeting, during which we discussed our understanding of the problem and shared
links to resources, we each went off and came up with our own design sketches. Between
the two of us we came up with a number of designs. We then came together and shared our
ideas. No design was perfect. We each took time to draw our designs up on the whiteboard
in the lab while explaining the design as we went. The watching member then offered
suggestions and pointed out omissions in the design that needed to be present. We also
evaluated whether the design answered all of the important visual queries (as listed above).
If a query was unanswerable, we discussed how the design could adapted and made to
address the query.
Once all designs had been discussed, we observed that the shortcomings of one design
could be resolved by borrowing from another design. As such, we began to merge designs,
discussing, and occasionally butting heads over clashing opinions. In hindsight, the clashes
lead to a more fleshed out design.
Our initial design sketches as well as initial Photoshop designs are depicted below:
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12
From all of the initial design sketches above we ended up with Design 1, which follows and
which was presented to the class during the first crit session.
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4.2.
Design 1
The slides presented at the first presentation are available for download at the following
URL:
http://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~athalassinos/visWebsite/US%20TV%20Series%20Renewal.pptx
http://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~athalassinos/visWebsite/US%20TV%20Series%20Renewal.pptx
High-level view
Detailed View
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Explanation
All USA television networks branch out from the central node of the tree.
From each network’s node, there are two branches; one for winter and one for summer.
From each of the winter and summer branches, the genres of that network branch out.
From each of the genres, the days of the week branch out and from there, the shows that air
on that day are represented. In the high-level
high level tree view, the shows are represented as circles
with not much detail, however, when the user clicks on a particular show, a more detailed
view is displayed with more information. This is explained below.
Design Rationalisation
•
The logos of the networks are used because they are symbols that an executive
would be familiar with. It would be easy for the executive to look at the tree and find
their network.
•
The branches representing winter and summer are colour coded. Winter is blue,
which is a cool colour, while, summer is a warm orange colour.
•
Circles represent series,
series, with the size of the circle representing the popularity of the
show (the ratings of the current season plus the social buzz on Twitter and
Facebook).
•
The colour of the circle represents the number of episodes of that series that has
h
aired. The colour corresponds to a range of episodes, and therefore also indicates
the proximity of a show to syndication.
Circle colour range
o
Episodes < 64 (red)
o
64 <= Episodes < 88 (green)
(
o
88 <= Episodes (already in syndication) (blue)
(
The colour heat intensity is used to convey meaning.
(http://donnayoung.org/art/color
http://donnayoung.org/art/color-theory.htm)
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Red is a very hot colour, and may indicate danger. If a series has less than 64
episodes, renewing it for another season of 24 episodes will not get it in to
syndication, therefore we thought red an appropriate colour. Green is cooler than red,
thus representing a series with between 64 and 87 episodes – another season will
get it into syndication. A show that is coloured in blue is already in syndication.
•
The colour of the circle’s outline represents whether the series has already been
renewed, whether it has been cancelled or whether the decision is still pending.
Outline colour
o
Cancelled – red outline
o
Renewed – green outline
o
Decision pending – black outline
In terms of renewal, we represent cancelled shows in red, once again drawing on
red’s reputation as representing danger, while we use green, the opposite of red on
the colour wheel to indicate the opposite of cancellation - renewal. Additionally, green
is considered to be a colour that represents something good as well as growth and
renewal, which is appropriate for our context.
We decided to use black for the outline of series pending decision because these are
the shows that the network will be looking at because they need to make a decision
regarding these shows. Making the outline black (a colour that has not been used to
colour the inside of the circle), makes the series stand out.
•
The number within circle indicates the timeslot in which the series airs. The number
is transparent and overlaid on the circle so as not to detract from the other aspects,
especially in the detailed view.
•
The series circle is divided into a pie chart, with the pie slices representing the
following (in this order in a clockwise fashion), Twitter, Facebook and viewership.
These slices are differentiated by texture. The textures are very distinct to prevent
the slices from blending in with each other. Crosses are easy to differentiate from
horizontal lines, as are dots. Additionally, the outline colour of the circle has been
used to define the slices of the pie (that is, if the show is pending decision, the outline
of the slices is black, just like the outline of the circle).
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Example
The image above represents two shows,
show , A and B. B is much bigger than A, indicating that is
a far more popular show.. Show A,
A which is far from syndication, airs at 8pm and has been
cancelled, while show B,, which is close to syndication, airs at 10pm and a decision regarding
its renewal has not yet been made. Viewership accounts for a larger portion show B’s
popularity than social buzz, while show A has almost equal amounts of social buzz and
viewership.
Feedback
A number of valid comments were
wer made in the first crit session which had been overlooked
in the initial design sessions. Often it is easy to overlook things in your own design but an
impartial observer is able to spot issues and make suggestions by looking at it. For this
reason, we found the session very useful.
The main problem was that too much was being represented and the circles representing
the shows were too small for comparison. It was suggested we look in to using blur, other
shapes and symbols somehow. It was also pointed out that the outline of the shapes was not
easily visible because it was sometimes the same colour as the shading of the shape.
We were not completely happy with our first design and we felt it necessary to revisit the
brainstorming process. We realised that although there is a wealth of data that we need to
represent, we should make use of an interface in order to allow the user to select some
desired parameters, which would limit the amount of information we needed
ed to encode in the
visual at any one time.
We made a number of changes to the initial design, that we felt addressed
ed the concerns
raised and also incorporated some of the suggestions made in order to produce a more
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effective visualisation. Additionally, drawing on inspiration from classmates’ designs and the
feedback that they received, helped us avoid things that would not work. Our second
iteration was therefore quite different from the design first presented.
Another important point that emerged in the crit session is that the design seemed to be
constrained by the fact that we had selected a tool to use. Had we not had a tool in mind, we
could have been more creative. The next time we embark on a visualisation design, we will
know not to select a tool first.
4.3.
Design 2
The slides presented at the second presentation are available for download at the following
URL: http://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~athalassinos/visWebsite/VIS%20Pres%202.pptx
This is the design that was presented at the second session, which is an effective redesign
of the overall visualisation, keeping some of the details of the first design presented.
The inspiration of this design was a simple doughnut chart, that evolved into an interactive
doughnut with multiple concentric circles, drawing inspiration from the Sunburst example
presented at this URL http://philogb.github.io/jit/static/v20/Jit/Examples/Sunburst/example2.
This design is more refined because we adhered to the “detail on demand” principle which
means that we visually encoded only the most relevant data, making the design less “busy“
and putting the spotlight on the information that a user would typically want to see. To this
end, we now allow filters so that the user is in control of what he/she sees.
Whereas the hyperbolic tree design attempted to display all networks and its shows for each
season simultaneously, design two allows a maximum selection of two networks to compare
and a minimum of one network.
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View
Explanation
The user selects their desired criteria from the drop-down boxes on the left hand side. The
network filter needs a minimum of one selection and allows a maximum of two networks to
be selected for comparison (a drop-down is provided for each of these two options). All other
filtering fields are not mandatory.
A large doughnut chart represents each of the selected networks with the relevant data
encoded within it as outlined in the rationalisation below.
Only once the user clicks the “view” button does the visualisation appear. This is done to
avoid having to render different parts of the visualisation each time a filter is changed. That
is, the user should select all filters and then click “View”.
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Design Rationalisation
•
Different shapes represent different genres. Circles represent Sci-Fi series, squares
represent Crime series, triangles represent Comedy series and stars represent
Reality series. The selection of stars to represent Reality series plays on the fact that
the people on Reality series want to be stars.
•
The size of the shape represents the popularity of the show. This includes the
number of viewers plus the social buzz (Facebook and Twitter posts about the show).
•
The colour of the shapes represents the number of episodes of that series that has
aired. The colour corresponds to a range of episodes, and therefore also indicates
the proximity of a show to syndication.
Circle colour range
o
Episodes < 64 (red)
o
64 <= Episodes < 88 (green)
o
88 <= Episodes (already in syndication) (blue)
This is the same as in design 1.
•
The logos of the networks are used for familiarity and are placed at the focal point of
the doughnut chart which represents a specific network.
•
Shapes are outlined in black so that stand out from the colour background of the
circle’s rings. The black outline makes the shape “pop”.
•
Each of the concentric rings of the circle represents a television season. The blue
ring represents winter because blue is a cooler colour than orange which represents
the summer television season.
•
The inner and outer rings can swap in and out so that the season selected by the
user in the filter is the outer ring. This makes it easier for the user to see the shows
that they are interested in seeing. For example, if the user selects winter, the blue
ring will be the outer ring of both network circles select (as illustrated in the image
above). If the user would like to compare the winter shows of one network to the
summer shows of another network in order to determine whether a show should be
moved to a different season, the user can click on the inner ring of the second circle
in order to swap it with the outer one. Having the two seasons being compared on
the outer ring makes comparison between shows on different networks easier
because the distance between them is reduced and there are no irrelevant shapes in
the path that the eye follows from one network to another.
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•
The segments (renewed/pending/cancelled) of each network aligns with that of the
other network. If the user selects “pending” from the filter, the pending segment of the
first network will be aligned with the pending of the second network. By clicking on
the second network and dragging in a clockwise direction, the second network can
be rotated to align a different renewal status with that of the first circle. This will allow
a user to compare the pending shows on their network with those shows already
renewed by another network so that they can see what the competition will be like
next year for that season.
•
Series not corresponding to the filters selected by the user are blurred out. The blur
is very effective in placing emphasis on the things that are relevant and making them
stand out more while not completely eliminating all other data.
•
If filters are selected and the user clicks “View”, the shapes of the shows
corresponding to those filters will flash once to grab the user’s attention and focus it
on those shows. This, along with the blur, uses two channels to emphasis the
important information and drowns out the rest.
•
In the key, coloured paintbrush symbols are used to represent the colours used for
episodes ranges.
•
Text (renewed/pending/cancelled) is always readable – they are never upside down
even when the circle is being rotated.
Query Walkthrough
The following is a query that I would need answered if I were network executive at
ABC.
Query: Should I cancel Castle?
I select the following from the drop-downs:
Networks: ABC and NBC
Season: Winter
Time slot: 10pm
Day: Monday
Genre: Crime
Status: Pending
I click view and I see two network circles as in the image on page 19.
The blue ring (winter) is on the outside of each circle and the pending of the circles is lined
up. I see that Castle is very popular because it is a very big square. Although blurred, I can
see that it is bigger than shows in other genres in winter on ABC. It is clearly one of the best
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shows for ABC. It is already in syndication. Because it is so popular, it would be a wise
decision to renew it, but to make sure, I want to see what it will be up against next season.
To do this, I click on NBC’s circle and rotate it clockwise until the “renewed” of NBC lines up
with ABC’s “pending”. Now I can see that there are no crime shows that have been renewed
yet, so it will not have competition in the genre. I should definitely renew Castle.
Feedback
Once again, a number of useful constructive criticisms and suggestions emerged.
•
One of the best suggestions we received is something that really cuts to the core of the
problem this visualisation endeavours to address, that is, comparison of shows between
networks. It was suggested that we add an “all other networks” option to the networks
drop-down list that would allow an executive to compare their network to an aggregated
view of all other network’s shows.
•
Also mentioned was the fact that the shapes representing the genres are not related to
the genres and as such, it is an unnecessary cognitive load to remember which shape
represents which genre. It was suggested to consider using symbols as an outline with a
show logo transparency over that (or to hover over shape to see genre).
Ideally for this presentation we would have liked to have an interactive version of the design
in order to fully demonstrate the user interaction with the design and how the interactivity
component facilitates visual queries. For example, allowing the user to align renewal
statuses and switching the seasons in and out so that the relevant season is on the outer
ring. These design aspects are not effectively conveyed with static images.
4.4.
Final Design
The final design incorporates the feedback from the second crit and it is only slightly different
to design 2.
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View
The changes that were made are as follows:
•
Symbols are used to represent genres. Although we kept the shapes the same as in
design 2, an alien symbol is overlaid on the sci-fi shapes, a gun on crime shows and
theatre masks on comedy shows. Reality does not have an overlay because the star
shape already conveys what the genre is.
•
We have removed the show logo transparency from each shape as it has been replaced
with the genre symbol. Having both the logo transparency and the symbol overlaid would
have been messy. The show name is written next to the corresponding shape and the
show logo can be seen if the user hovers over the shape.
•
By clicking on a specific show, the details of the show are shown on the left hand side of
the visualisation.
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5. Strengths and Weaknesses of Design
We consider the following to be the strengths and weaknesses of our final design.
•
If there are many shows in a season, the ring will need to be very big. Therefore, the
width of the ring, as well as the placement of the shapes (which represent series), will be
determined ad-hoc. The width of the inner and outer rings therefore does not need to be
equal – it is dependent on the number of series and the size of the shapes which
represent them.
•
Shows in different genres are difficult to compare because one cannot easily compare
different shapes.
•
The popularity of a show can be misrepresented because of the inclusion of social buzz
in the size calculation of the shape. This is because buzz is not necessarily good, but a
lot of buzz (albeit bad buzz) will make the shape big creating the illusion that it is very
popular.
o
Solution: formula for calculating shape size: #viewers accounts for 80% ; social
buzz 20%
o
details view shows ☺ and to represent good and bad buzz percentages
6. Conclusions
To our mind, our final visualisation is refined and effective. It allows for the answering of the
most important visual queries in order to allow rapid decision making for executives at
television networks. We believe that this fleshed out idea can be handed to a development
team as a brief for development. We think that our biggest success was abandoning our first
design despite the fact that one can be attached one’s first design. In the end our second
design was far better. The presentation sessions were incredibly helpful for the design
process because many ideas were picked up and feedback specific to our group helped
refine the visualisation.
7. Future work
Although we would have liked to have a fully interactive implementation of the design, badly
documented JavaScript visualisation libraries prevented us from doing so. We tried to adapt
the Sunburst visualisation
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(http://philogb.github.io/jit/static/v20/Jit/Examples/Sunburst/example2), however it required
us to define custom nodes that allowed shapes, rather than text to be rendered but the
documentation was not comprehensive enough to allow us to do this. We did however
implement the parts of the visualisation that we could with conventional HTML and
JavaScript. This implementation is available on the project website
(people.cs.uct.ac.za/~athalassinos/visWebsite) under the “Prototype” menu item.
An implementation with real data would be useful in order to determine whether the network
circle could be scaled appropriately to fit all series’ shapes and whether it is visually
appealing, or too cluttered with all of the shows in it.
8. Work Allocation
Anna Thalassinos
•
Report (content and website)
•
Modelling of Design 1 using ThinkBuzan iMindMap (for tree) and Photoshop (for piechart)
•
Presentation slides
Walter Khumalo
•
Tool discovery
•
Modelling of Design 1 using ThinkBuzan iMindMap and Photoshop (for pie-chart)
•
Design 1 Implementation using InfoVis (hyperbolic tree design)
•
Design 2 Implementation using HTML and JavaScript
Reference List
[1] http://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Factsheets/factvchip.html Accessed 20
May 2012
[2] http://www.howstuffworks.com/question433.htm
[3] http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2012/nielsen-and-twitter-establish-social-tvrating.html
[4] http://variety.com/2003/tv/news/cablers-raise-syndie-stakes-1117892381/
[5] http://mashable.com/2013/01/14/social-media-tv-chart-1-14/)
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