Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of television stations in North America by media market


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was keep. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 04:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

List of television stations in North America by media market
AfDs for this article: 
 * – (View AfD) (View log)

The lists are owned by Nielsen and should not be listed here Ph992 12:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment If these lists are truly owned by Nielsen, would that be a copyvio candidate? Ten Pound Hammer  • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps) 13:19, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment It's possible that the copyright holder allows use for this purpose (as with the map .gif, which has a copyright statement). General information from Nielsen, such as national television ratings, is usually made available to everyone, and I suspect that's true about size of TV markets.  On the other hand, specific information about how a station performs in the market is intended only for the subscriber to the ratings report.  Mandsford 13:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong delete To be fair, I would say this should be deleted in the same way that another list was recently deleted (List of United States radio markets), which was the list of radio markets owned by Arbitron. Both lists should likewise be deleted. --DavidTheLion 17:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep: That article has been here at least the last few years, unopposed, and never contested until now. While most Nielsen data is, indeed, copyrighted, the market names and their rankings are common knowledge, and can be found anywhere on the internet, even if Nielsen does own the data. Likely Nielsen has granted permission to list the market rankings, with few reservations. As for the map, permission was indeed granted for its use here. In my opinion, this article should've never been nommed for deletion. I would go on, but my blood is boiling right now. -- azumanga 17:09, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. This seems to have been a misunderstanding from a new user (user:Ph992). This list is widely available elsewhere (such as here, here, and here. Do you really think Zap2it.com maintains pages in violation of copyright? The rankings change on a yearly basis. As Mandsford says, specific information about how well a station performs is sensitive information that Nielsen would rightly want to protect, but the market rankings are widely available, have been since the 1950s (Ingram, 2002), and figure greatly into U.S. television industry operations. Firsfron of Ronchester  17:31, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Nielsen widely distributes such information and makes market rankings and size available to anyone via download. The image used on the page is also widely distributed and should also be acceptable for use in Wikipedia, as long as a proper fair use rationale is provided. dhett (talk • contribs) 17:36, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep - The markets data can be found on a number of websites from 100000watts.com to LostRemote. The lists are, like Firs said, widely available. -  NeutralHomer  T:C 20:06, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Speedy close I almost said "strong keep," as the market rankings have been widely available for over half a century, and are an important part of television industry operations. Also, you can't copyright facts.  But I notice that this user's very first edit was to nominate this article for deletion. Blueboy96 21:13, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: By the looks of his edit log, it seems the only reason he's here is to delete this article. -- azumanga 21:25, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Follow-up: And as of October 1, he has not made any further comments on this dispute -- nor did any more edits on Wikipedia. -- azumanga 00:42, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep Per the other reasons above. The information is common knowledge and even used beyond Nielsen for other purposes. Nate 22:08, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: What evidence is there that this nomination was made in bad faith? It looks like a newbie mistake to me (misunderstanding, nomination made to the wrong page, etc.). Firsfron of Ronchester  22:24, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * You're correct, my apologies. Redacted my starting comment. Nate 01:48, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep per Firsfron. Maxamegalon2000 05:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep This page is an incredibly useful resource, and you can't copyright facts. People seem to forget that a lot on WP. Also, any way to restore the radio rankings page based on that principle? 216.15.42.170 03:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Per the reasons stated by those before. The information is widely available and is used by just about every relevant website out there.  The page is a great source of information and is the sort of thing that belongs on WP.

If the rather pedestrian logic in play here for this article's deletion were taken to its logical conclusion, there would be no articles on WP about the Academy Awards, since the term Academy Award and Oscar are copyrighted - maybe we could call them "motion picture salutations" and "anthropomorphic achievement totems," respectively? - we'd have to delete the pages of past winners, since you could argue that that's proprietary information for ABC, the broadcaster, and the Academy, and you would have literally a few hundred thousand articles on WP deleted based nothing more than on rampant paranoia and a subsequent wave of self-censorship. There would be no articles on commercial products, which have copyrighted or trademarked names, no articles on mascots, cartoons, movies, etc, since all of that is coyprighted/trademarked. We wouldn't be able to use passages from books, either, since that would be unauthorized reproduction of coyprighted materials.

Nielsen posts the market information on its website every year, makes it freely accessible and everybody and their brother in the television industry and beyond use it. It's not a big secret. If it were essential proprietary information, they wouldn't post it and they would sue those who post it all over the Internet, which they haven't. Once you release facts into the public domain, they cannot be recalled for royalties later. The fact that the page acknowledges that Nielsen is the source should be enough to put this to rest. They give the information away, it's not locked behind a paid membership or anything of the sort, so our acknowledgement of their kindly making it available is enough, just as it is with any other source.

I have no idea how this line of thinking was able to steamroller over the radio markets page, since that information is also freely available. Can we get that page back?

This article is a fantastic resource for the media-minded, as everything is neatly categorized and one doesn't have to search for individual stations but can just look at all of those in a market. It would be a tremendous shame to see such a valuable page, into which so much effort went, deleted based on ill-founded logic. If in the future Nielsen asks for it to be taken down, that's another issue, but that hasn't happened. The page should be kept. Canadian Bobby 16:45, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I too think this is a great resource and should not be deleted. STRONG keep. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Amschulman (talk • contribs) 22:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.