An ex TV exec posted here this morning that Nielsen counts a “viewer” as a bonafide “audience” if one watches for at least 5 minutes.
Does Neilsen still have people fill out surveys? Or do they get the data from the cable companies? I am sure those cable boxes send back as much information as they send out. Time on, time off, channels on, time on, scrolling etc. Cable companies would want that data though I have opinion on the cable TV industry business model that belongs on another thread... In short it should be killed off and will eventually die.
These days with so many people cutting the cord, I am not sure how Neilsen does it. Netflix for example won’t release any information on viewership of its shows. They will just say things like “most watched ever” or “top 10 today”. No data to relate it to. Youtube has a counter. But all these platforms can easily manipulate that number any way they want - example as someone wrote above if you’re scrolling and it “autostarts” for half a second, that might count as a view.
But, politics aside, X seems like it is working hard to become something much more important than Twitter ever was. I think Jack Dorsey still owns a piece (iirc he kicked in some cash, or his shares, to help Musk finance the buyout) and am certain that X will eventually stream a lot of content like Tucker’s (indeed Musk made an offer that content creators would get 100% of the money their content earns for a year), post books and articles, and add payment features and shopping. I figure it’s only a matter of time until they have a smart TV app to compete with Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Hulu etc etc. My smart TV has so many available apps to download I don’t know what half of them are - I only download the ones I use.