So have you ever been a Nielsen rating household, or known someone who did? What was it like? What did Nielsen have you do? And personally how did your opinion of ratings accuracy change?
No, but I did Arbitron (for the radio) ratings once… what a pain in the tuchus that was… I think I got paid a dollar.
We were a Nielsen household back in the early '90s, when we still lived in NYC. I don’t remember much, except watching a lot of PBS that week.
a friend’s family did it way back , they did it on paper. Most people now have a box so you don’t need to write stuff down.
My sister and I did it back around 2000 or so when we were sharing an apartment. We filled out a paper journal listing who watched what for a week, IIRC. We made deals with each other to claim we had watched each others’ favorite shows. 
It made me think that ratings might be inflated. Other people were probably claiming to watch shows that they hadn’t actually watched, like we did.
We were once, in the mid 80’s. We had young kids, were so busy with them and work, I don’t think the TV was on more than 30 minutes the whole survey time. I wrote in the diary twice, I think.
I did it in 2010, and was thinking about “psyching” the survey, but the folks here at this message board convinced me otherwise.
I’ve been a ‘Nielsen family’ of one, twice in the last 10 years. I just filled in as best I could a little paper booklet telling what was on my tv, even if it was on and no one was watching it. 8 a.m. - 10 a.m.: Today Show. Noon: local news. 2 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.: Weather Channel 9 p.m-midnight: CNN (or whatever). Then mailed it in, and for my troubles they sent me some crisp new dollar bills - make it rain!
My brother was, not long ago. I think something was hooked up to the TV so they didn’t have to fill out anything.
I think we were one in the seventies. I wasn’t the one who filled the paperwork out, since I was just a kid.
We did it a few years ago. They install a box for every tv that requires you to push a button every half hour or so. Plus each different user had to “log in.” It was so annoying that it changed the way we watched TV. Normally, it was not uncommon for us to have the TV on whether we were watching it or not, which was a no no for the Nielson people. So we stopped having the TV on as much. What you observe, you change. After a couple of months we made them come and take the boxes out. They were not happy about that at all.
Did the same back in the 90’s. Scored some concert tickets, that was a bonus.
Twice. Once as a kid my household was mailed the questionnaires for a month and my husband and I also were Neilson form fillerouters. I lived in NYC for both.
Yeah, mid-80s. As I recall we got a questionnaire concerning the makeup of the family–ages, educational level. And then a sort of diary to log what we were watching. This was a couple of years before we deep-sixed the TV, and the kids were really little and not watching much. We had cable at the time, so I assume they could have checked what we were watching. What they did not check for was if we went to sleep while watching (which we did).
I also got the Arbitron thing, and since I mostly listened to the radio in my car, and routinely switched channels whenever a commercial came on…that probably didn’t tell them too much. Except I notice recently that every radio station seems to run commercials at the same time, so maybe there was a pattern. I definitely felt like I earned my dollar filling that thing out.
Might as well answer my own question…
Never knew an Nielsen family, but my grandmother in the late 90s got talked into being an Arbitron diary taker for a week. It didn’t exactly convince me ratings are kept well. We had to help my grandmother, about 80 at the time, fill out a lot of the diary (often on memory). Plus this story:
Every day, the local NBC affiliate aired Rosie O’Donnell at 4pm and the local news at 5pm. We didn’t pay much attention to Rosie but Grandma still had it on every day and we listed it in the diary. Well a few years later Grandma said she hated Rosie O’Donnell. I asked why she watched the show. Well Grandma says she didn’t want to miss her favorite local news. So your ratings decisions are made by people worried of changing the channel.
We were back in the mid 1990’s. All on paper which I did every morning. My wife did not bother and just told me, you know what I watch, so put that down.
My older brother and I, when we were living together in the late '70s. We just had to note down the shows we watched in a little booklet, and I think they sent us a check for some nominal sum.
I remember noting that between us, we understood five languages besides English, and most of our entries were for PBS (they were showing I, Claudius and Poldark at the time).
Interesting about the boxes. We were a Nielsen family around 5-8 years ago, and received paper diaries. And $5 cash.
I’ve done the diary-for-a-week version.
Me, too, but decades ago. I lied my ass off in that thing.