Patent ID: 8468559

Claim:
A system, comprising: a data processing apparatus; and software stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions executable by the one or more processing devices and upon such execution cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising: accessing ratings data describing, for each of a plurality of first television programs, demographics of a viewing audience of the first television program; identifying demographically rated channel tune records identifying channel tunes from broadcasts of respective first television programs to a broadcast of a second television program, wherein the first television programs are rated television programs having associated ratings data and the second television program is an unrated program; identifying demographically rated channel tune records identifying channel tunes to broadcasts of respective third television programs from the broadcast of the second television program, wherein the respective third television programs are rated television programs having associated ratings data: for each channel tune record identifying a channel tune from a broadcast of a respective first television program to the broadcast of the second television program, determining demographics of the viewing audience of the respective first television program from the ratings data; for each channel tune record identifying a channel tune from a broadcast of the second television program to the broadcast of a respective third television program, determining demographics of the viewing audience of the respective third television program from the ratings data; attributing the demographics determined for each channel tune record to the second television program; and estimating the demographics of the viewing audience of the second television program from the demographics attributed to the second program.