How the Attention Score works
Attention Score is the daily popularity index Television Stats publishes for TV shows, movies, and people. Here's what goes into it and what it means.
What it measures
Attention Score captures how much attention a title is getting from audiences on a given day. It gives a clear understanding of which shows, movies, and people have the largest audiences online each day.
A score of 100 is calibrated to the typical daily #1 show. Most titles sit well below that.
How it's built
Every score starts with Wikipedia pageviews: how many people are reading a title's Wikipedia pages each day. It's one of the best available measures of general-public curiosity, capturing everyone from casual searchers to fans checking facts after an episode.
That foundation is then built up with additional engagement signals, each weighted by how reliably it reflects real attention. These include the volume of new reviews audiences are leaving, the growth of a title's fan communities and social followings, and demand from torrent downloads. Not every signal is available for every title every day.
Each signal is normalized to a common scale before it's combined, and the result is scaled so 100 lands on the typical daily number one show. The exact sources and weights are proprietary, but if you have questions about the approach, get in touch.
The methodology evolves as we improve accuracy and as underlying data comes and goes. Updates can revise historical scores, so a title's chart may shift after a change.
Scores for people
People are harder to measure cleanly than titles, so actor scores take a simpler approach: they are based on Wikipedia pageviews alone, scaled so actors sit on the same 0 to 100+ scale as shows and movies.
Scores over time
The daily score is a snapshot. Three longer views appear across the site:
- Peak Attention Score is the highest 30-day consecutive average a title has ever reached. Titles with a peak of 80 or above earn the Cultural Phenomenon badge.
- 1-Year Attention Score is the average daily score over the last 365 days, capturing durable attention across a full year.
- Season Attention Score is a show's average over the 30 days from a season's premiere, so seasons can be compared directly against each other.
Freshness
Scores are recalculated once a day, covering the prior calendar day, and typically publish each morning US Pacific time. If the underlying data is late, the day is held back rather than shipped as a partial score.
What it doesn't capture
The Attention Score tracks online activity. It correlates with viewership but isn't a substitute for it. Its signals also skew toward English-language activity, so international titles with strong local followings can score lower than their true global audience suggests.
Changelog
- 2026-07-09Clarified how scores are built.
- 2026-04-16Methodology page published for the new Attention Score.
Questions or clarifications? Get in touch·About Television Stats