The One with the Ratings

Last Summer I binged Friends on Netflix; on a light day 3 episodes to a no shame 10 episodes vegfest. Chandler is one of my favorite characters. When people ask what I do, the default answer is “statistical analysis and data reconfiguration” or you know a transponster.

Graph TV  is a site that allows one to visualize IMDB ratings of various shows, or you can use ggplot/plotly to create a custom graphic.

IMDB ratings

The Iconic quiz show episode linked above is ‘The one with the Embryos.’

ggplot(combinedrating,aes(x=EpNumber,y=UserRating,color=as.factor(Season)))+
  geom_point()+
  stat_smooth(method="lm", se=FALSE) +
  labs(x="Episode #",y="Average Rating",title="Friends Episode IMDB Ratings by Season") +
  geom_point(data = clips, aes(x=clips$EpNumber,y=clips$UserRating), color="black", shape=1, size=5) + 
  geom_text_repel(aes(x=EpNumber,y=UserRating,color=Season, label = Name), data = combinedrating %>% filter(UserRating > 9.4 | UserRating < 8)) +
  ylim(c(5,10))

Immediately I notice that the lowest rated episodes are clip shows which are marked with a black circle, the exception being ‘The One with the Donor.’ Not even John Stamos and Hank Azaria  could save that episode. Also the Series ended at a good time, the quality was starting to trend downwards in season 8,9.

Then combining the IMDB ratings with the Nielsen ratings, I pivoted to see what the connection between ratings and viewers. No surprise that season finales have high ratings and viewership compared to clip shows. While clip shows can be useful for cutting costs, they can have a negative impact for viewership (and thus ad dollars) despite no change in quality of the next episode. This begs the question should Syndication skip clip shows during rotation to keep viewers?

Interactive Plotly Chart

Cross correlation function (CCF)

ccf(combinedrating$Viewers, combinedrating$UserRating, lag.max=3, plot=TRUE, main="Viewers and Rating ACF")

A CCF shows the correlation of two variables with a lag to show a relationship over time. We see the most significant times to be between +/- 1 episode which makes intuitive sense that the quality of an episodes 3 weeks away does not have a strong relationship. and that the episode viewership after a good episode has more of an effect than before. Seen by the ACF being higher at -1, than +1.