Santa Ana : ‘Toys on Parade’ Scored High in Nielsen, Arbitron Ratings

The city’s parade of giant balloons, carried live last month on KTLA-TV (Channel 5), scored “excellent” with two television rating services, an account executive for the station said.

Lori Misicka said she was “really surprised” that “Toys on Parade” scored so well on both the Nielsen and Arbitron overnight rating services.

“Because this was the first ‘Toys on Parade’ and because it received very little promotion, I think the ratings are absolutely excellent,” she said.

Both Nielsen and Arbitron compile ratings based on such factors such as audience age, location and gender. Nielsen gave the parade an overall rating of 3.9; Arbitron rated it 4.3. Those numbers best equate to the number of households in greater Los Angeles and Orange County that were tuned in to KTLA for the parade, Misicka said.

Both rating services found that about a third of all households in the area had television sets turned on during the parade. Nielsen said 12% of the viewers watched the parade and Arbitron placed the figure at 13%, Misicka said.

She compared the number of viewers with the TV audience of Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses parade --”an institution in California televised since 1947”--which scored an overall Arbitron rating of 18.

The 4.3 Arbitron rating means an estimated 2,077,000 Southern California households were tuned in to “Toys on Parade,” Misicka said. In addition, the parade was seen on cable television as far away as Texas and New Mexico.

Laurie Cottrell, city director of communications, said she was “very pleased” with the returns. The city and KTLA plan to produce the parade again this year, she said, and a tentative date of Dec. 7 has been offered by the station.