what if all of us left our TV on FOX or OAN all day and all night? Wouldn’t that change the MSNBC numbers. Can’t you leave the cable box on and manually turn off your tv screen? And, and, and stay off Facebook. And, and don’t use google when searching use bing.com ??
“Can’t you leave the cable box on and manually turn off your tv”
If you put the cable box on FOX or if your lucky on OAN you could unplug the TV. FOX or OAN would get the rating.
Cut the cable and stream what you want from the Internet. With a Roku (or similar) box, it's possible to put it on your TV. But most of my streaming is now done over my laptop or iPad. I hardly ever turn the TV on at all these days.