I figure that at least Karma and Ginger can earn their dog food and bones. This should be interesting.
What are your thoughts?
Do it legit or not at all.
Hmmm...a pair of family members who mostly stay in one room, only leave the house a couple of times a day and never go farther away than the back yard? Sounds a bit suspicious, y’know?
You are supposed to keep it confidential so no one pressures you to watch a certain TV or listen to a certain radio station. My dad did it for two years and it was a great experience for him.
Why make a mockery of the process? This helps you influence what the rest of the nation watches
I didn’t know Nielson was still collecting ratings in this way. You must meet certain marketing targets of potential value. If I may ask, are you in a relatively high income household?
I’m age 63, which is not usually the target for first tier marketing. I’m middle class and with no current dependents. So, there are only so many kinds of merchandise that I would be expected to be buying or planning to buy in the present fiscal year.
Are there any other organizations that you will permit to bug your home?
Sounds like animal cruelty—TV is so foul these days it is not even fit for dog consumption. ;-)
(Actually, I like your plan.)
> I and each member of my household simply wear a ‘pager’ type meter during the day <
Wait a minute. Do they want you to wear that pager only while you watch TV, or do they want you to wear it everywhere?
If it’s only while watching TV, you might want to go for it. As others have noted, you will help influence what is shown on TV.
But if it’s everywhere, go ahead and put it on your dog. They deserve that just for asking you to do such a thing.
I did the initial part of the survey once... where you write everything you watch into the TV diary.
What was funny is that two dollars came with the initial offer. lol. I wonder how many 2 dollars they lost doing that.
Once I sent in the diary, I think it was $30 they sent me.
Nielson is legit and they’re willing to pay a little cash for their statistics.
I have no problem with that.
My parents participated in this.
They naively thought that through their participation they could help to arrest the slide of television into that great cultural sewer.
But to their dismay it only continued to get worse, so they gave up.
Eh. We did it for four years. Money came in handy and I don’t give a damn who know what I watch on TV. What? “Matlock” fans are gonna kick my butt cuz I turn the TV off after “Perry Mason”?
But you wear the meters all the time so they can pick up the signals from media programs you might not realize you’re being exposed to. Now THAT scares the crap of me. Not that I care they know what those signals are, but the fact that we’re being exposed to stuff that is so hard to detect and that we don’t know about... And I just watched “Banshee Chapter”.
I’d do it just so they’d piss their money away. I don’t watch their crap on TV anyway. Of course, I’m sure they fudge the numbers anyway as to satisfy the highest bidder.
I did that years ago and spoke to my friends wife who was a producer for radio. The only interesting take-way was if you live in an area with overlap from different stations, your results count a ton more if you watch or listen to the station in the bigger media market. For example, at that time I lived in Monterey, CA. I could pick up Rush Limbaugh from San Francisco, Watsonville, CA (Santa Cruz) or Salinas. I made sure to listen to Rush on KSFO from San Francisco so it would count more.
Back in the 1980’s our family did it for a week. They must have trouble finding people to do it. The fact that you’re ongoing makes me question the validity of the results.
Don’t ever throw away mail from Nielson without opening. Often it’ll contain a $2 or $5 bill.