How do we know the ratings numbers are accurate? When we see a poll, we question: Who did they poll? Was the poll sample population representative of the entire population?
I have the same question here. Is the sample representative?
According to this article there were 50,000 people (in 20,000 households) whose TV viewings are counted towards ratings:
http://splitsider.com/2011/01/why-nielsen-ratings-are-inaccurate-and-why-theyll-stay-that-way/
This article mentions that Nielsen viewers live in 31 “meter markets”
http://tvline.com/2014/05/29/tv-ratings-nielsen-to-increase-sample-size/
It looks like larger, liberal areas may be oversampled based not this data. So it’s unclear how many people living in suburban and rural areas are being counted.