Media delivery is far too diverse for these ratings to mean much of anything. Just my opinion.
If Nielsen is gathering data from 37,000 people, and the sample is representative of the population as a whole, then they should be correct within 0.5%.
Some people have too much time on their hands.
Many years ago (30+?) I was a Nielsen “family”. That was when all I watched was network news. (Yeah, I know ...) So I wrote down all the news shows that I watched, and then in the back in the “comments” section, I let them have it about what I thought about network TV. Never heard back, and was never asked again to contribute.
We have OTA, so often we race up and down until we give up and read a book or watch something on Netflix. If we had cable then it might take 10 minutes to run the channels to find something that wasn't totally stupid.
I took part in the Nielsen survey for a while, years ago.
It worked exactly as this article described: You’re sent some crisp bills up front, in return for keeping track of everything you watch. You must write everything down on a type of chart. At the time, I was a notorious channel surfer, but, because I was so detailed, Nielsen invited me to do more surveys. I think they sent me $10 at one point.
The death of Arrested Development was sad. Though it was too clever for most Americans judging by the type of comedies that stay on top.
But Cary, if you were part of the cause of death of Firefly, we might have to have a serious discussion.
After the second or third call I got from a radio ratings service, I agreed to keep a diary for them. The funny thing is that I told them up front that I don’t listen to the radio. They said surveys needed to include nonusers, too. So I got a few bucks and a blue book in the mail.
I was supposed to write down on every page that I didn’t listen to the radio that day if such was the case. Eventually, I tossed the book in the trash. Never heard from them again.
“Goomba, gooomba, gooomba, goomba....”
We were a Neilson family about ten years ago based on the participation of my then thirty-something aged daughter - it was about the time Joe Scarborough had just started his show on MSNBC, so we made sure we listed it as what we watched whenever possible, figuring we’d help get a Republican, “conservative” get a toehold at that leftwing bastion - not sure how much it did to help, but his show goes on, although I never watch it and from what I hear he is a very unreliable spokesman for the conservative cause - be careful what you wish for.....
I was a Nielson family for a week about 20 years ago, but I don’t remember receiving any money with the request. I happened to mention to a friend that I was doing the Nielson survey, and she asked if I would watch a show for her. I’m not much of a TV watcher, so I would usually turn on the TV and mark that it was on, but that I wasn’t watching. I recorded some shows, and wrote that down in the book, too. I do recall that I watched more TV than normal that week, because for that one week, my TV watching “counted.”
There were a couple of times in the past when I got a phone call asking me to turn on a normally unused cable channel and watch a show. The day after, someone from that company would call and ask a lot of questions about the show and the commercials that ran during the show. The first time it happened, my answers were somewhat vague and I did not remember any of the commercials. The second time it happened, I knew what kinds of questions to expect, and so I paid attention to the commercials. I remember talking about one particular commercial being very dark—it was for an Olive Garden type restaurant, featuring a family sitting around a table, apparently having a good time and enjoying good food—in the dark. That company asked me a LOT of questions about that dark commercial. I don’t know what that company was, or whether it was gathering information about the pilot shows (neither of which ever made it past the pilot) or the commercials.
We were selected as a Nielsen “family” over 15 years ago, long before Netflix, DVRs or even DVDs. We did have a VCR, but didn’t watch it that week.
We had basically the same experience as the author of the article. We were invited to participate by mail and when we accepted we were sent a paper diary to record all of our viewing choices for the week.
It wasn’t hard to keep track, since we watched a total of about 2 hours of TV that week, which was typical of most weeks back then. Our kids were in elementary school and we kept the TV off most of the time.
We were never invited back.
Check out the surreptitious audio encoded signals Neilson uses for detailed viewing tracking:
I was an early ‘Nielsen Netratings’ person. I participated for years, until I had a ‘milestone’ birthday and they decided I was too old. I figured I really pushed up FR ratings. It was nice. They basically ran my browsing through a proxy server, which provided an extra layer of protection from embedded garbage. They mailed me a savings bond every quarter. (From the article and comments, it was less work and more money than the TV.)
TCM 24/7.
I’d love to participate. It would be easy. My vote should count even though I dumped TV in 1997. My diary would be completely blank.
Written responses would be expected to be unreliable.
If they really wanted samples they’d get feedback from set top boxes on millions of sets around the country.
Most households do so much surfing, any conclusions would require a very large sample size.
The cable companies know what channel is on and for how long so what is it that Nielsen can do that the cable companies cannot? Heck new tv’s with cameras can watch you on the couch and listen to you.
Your ISP also knows what sites you go to and for how long and what searches you do. My web stats tell how many visitors my site gets from countries all over the world. What pages they go to and for how long.
Another so-called "writer" who has no idea what "to beg the question" means.