Any Nielsen familys here? Are they allowed to acknowledge that they are part of the survey? IMO it’s a very flawed ratings system. I think TiVo records are a more reliable barometer of viewing habits (for that demographic).
This thread is better suited for IMHO.
I’ll move it for you.
Cajun Man
for the SDMB
The Only time I remember it happening was here:
My good friend did for a while. I think he’s responsible for keeping Veronica Mars on the air.
I was when I was a kid. We used diaries, of course. My sister and I were largely responsible for keeping The Dukes of Hazzard on.
I just did a week for the May sweeps. They still use a paper diary. You just write down anything you watched and who watched it, in 15 min intervals. If it was Tivo’d, you put down the original time it was recorded too. It seems exciting but it gets pretty tedious. (They pay you $15 cash too, which was nice.)
Tivo doesn’t have any data on which member of the household is watching, so it can’t really replace the old systems.
We were a Nielsen family for a couple of years. Our term just ended.
I liked to joke that we were probably the most useless Nielsen family out there.
Both kids in school who only come home at vacation time and then obsessively watch MTV.
Father who doesn’t even watch tv.
Mother only watches special cable ordered Indian channel.
The only thing I did over the course of out term was to beg my father to leave the TV on when Arrested Development was on and program me in as watching (which I was, 1300 miles away). It still didn’t help.
My parents’ household had the diaries for a week, and as others have said, it’s really tedious. They also had diaries for the radio survey, which was just sad, as the only thing they listen to is an all-news radio station, and that’s only in the car. (It’s really sad as both of their cars have excellent audio systems and they’re only using them to listen to AM newsradio.)