"Ratings Guy" is the second episode of the eleventh season of the animated comedy series Family Guy, and the 190th episode overall. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 7, 2012. The episode follows the Griffin family becoming a Nielsen family and Peter attempting to take over the TV airwaves.

This episode was dedicated to the memory of both Phyllis Diller (who voiced Thelma Griffin in several episodes of the show) and Michael Clarke Duncan (who had a brief voice role in this episode). This episode was also one of Duncan's final roles before his death from complications following a heart attack, which occurred a month prior to the air date.

The Griffins receive a letter from the Nielsen Company telling them they have been selected to have their viewing habits monitored. Tom Tucker comes to the door, having heard of the Griffins becoming a Nielsen family, and asks Peter for some suggestions to change the show. Tom performs Peter's crazy suggestions on the air, which displeases Peter's friends Joe and Quagmire. When the Nielsen representative returns to reset the card on his Nielsen box, Peter takes the opportunity to steal a bunch of Nielsen boxes so he can have a much bigger impact on the ratings.

Peter soon forces many shows to make outlandish changes to "improve" them, which angers Lois and Joe, and an angry mob issue their complaints towards Peter for what he did to some of their favorite TV shows. After barely getting medical help and getting kicked out of the Drunken Clam, Peter realizes he won't be able to show face around Quahog again unless he fixes things, and decides to try and fix television, but Mayor Adam West shows up and shoots the boxes to pieces to prevent Peter from ruining his favorite TV shows further and in retaliation for Peter adding an extra tree on One Tree Hill. With the boxes destroyed, Brian believes that they are now sunk, but suddenly Peter comes up with another plan.

Peter goes to the Television Producers Guild for help, stating that he is the man who ruined television and is going to fix it. He gathers many TV producers (including J.J. Abrams, Mark Burnett, Dick Wolf, Jon Hamm and Kelsey Grammer) to discuss ideas to make their shows better again. Abrams comes up with an idea about a show that details an alien that goes back in time and encounters a koala in an Eastern European town and Peter tells him to go with that idea. Peter then has four TV producers to make 15 workplace comedies where people talk to the camera for some reason, thus breaking the fourth wall. Burnett is asked by Peter to give him a reality show where people do horrible, unforgivable things to each other for embarrassingly small sums of money. Peter then has two TV producers leave to make a show about horrible New Jersey freaks and tells Wolf to give him the same Law & Order six times. Peter tells the TV producers from Bravo do a show about women fighting.

Every television show goes back to normal as Peter is friends with Joe and Quagmire again. Peter quotes "Well, let's drink to having TV back in the hands of people who know what they're doing." The final scene shows that Herbert has repaired the Nielsen boxes which Mayor West destroyed and is using them to make his own changes to TV. He calls up Disney Channel to have Zack and Cody in their underpants, claiming that their show would be funnier that way.

"Ratings Guy" was written by Dave Ihlenfeld and David Wright. "Ratings Guy" is the second episode they wrote together, with "Grumpy Old Man" being the first. "Ratings Guy" is the sixth episode to parody the show's title, after "Family Gay", "Family Goy", "Business Guy", "German Guy", and "Amish Guy". Ihlenfeld and Wright were freelance writers for the show, and had not previously written for any previous Family Guy episodes. The production staff had wanted "Ratings Guy" to be about politics, but director Pete Michels decided otherwise. A week earlier, he had pitched an idea suggesting that Peter would try to mess up television "in the weirdest way he can". This idea was often debated and discussed in the writers' room extensively by the staff, who wanted the episode to be about the Griffin family climbing Mount Everest; this idea was later used for the previous episode, "Into Fat Air". The idea for the episode was pitched by Alec Sulkin, who joined Family Guy in its fourth season, co-writing the episode "Petarded" with Wellesley Wild. Unlike Ihlenfeld and Wright, Sulkin has written for various episodes and has served as a producer since he joined the show. "Ratings Guy" was directed by James Purdum, who storyboarded half of the episode himself and partially worked on the animation with Brian Iles. "Ratings Guy" is Purdum's first episode for the show's eleventh season. Purdum had joined Family Guy as an animation director when he directed the fourth season episode "The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire" and has since served as a supervising producer. The scene where Peter adds an extra tree on One Tree Hill was constantly debated by the writers and staff, who are fans of the show and all wanted the scene to be deleted. At one point, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane even wanted the scene to be deleted; however, the animators objected to deleting it, as they thought the scene was funny and insisted the writers keep it.

Filmmaker J.J. Abrams guest-starred in the episode as a fictionalized version of himself. Abrams was a confessed fan of the show and had telephoned the show's production staff to ask if he could produce or assist in an episode's creation. Commenting on his appearance in the episode with Entertainment Weekly, Abrams said: "I know Family Guy is edgier than The Simpsons or Bob's Burgers, but I love the show personally. That's why I called the show's staff." Actress and stand-up comedian Sandra Bernhard guest-starred in the episode as a fictionalized version of herself, in a cutaway gag critiquing celebrity culture and political figures. Bernhard agreed to guest star on the condition that her fictionalized self reflect her career and lifestyle. When animating Bernhard, the writers used a stock photo of her that she had sent the animators when she agreed to appear as a model. Bernhard's face was given a gap between her teeth and more wrinkles under her eyes, as well as a bigger chin.