An article in today’s Slate argues that the best way to do this is NOT to write letters or enlist friends to watch the shows.
The author suggests the best route is to watch, and encourage others to watch, shows online. The theory is that these are events which the networks can track, whereas, unless you’re a Nielsen family, nobody knows if you’re watching a television show. Moreover, the demographic that watches entertainment on line, is thought to be a younger, more attractive demographic.
So, please, go tune in to Dollhouse and Chuck online. I’ll watch yours if you’ll watch mine. Or at least I’ll stream yours in the background while doing something else.
The revenues for online views of shows are much smaller than broadcast (although they can give you an idea of how much the DVDs will sell, and that can be a real asset to a bubble show). The best way to keep a show on the air is to convince your friends and acquaintances to give it a shot, because one or two of them probably are Nielsen families. You just don’t know which ones.
Well, they rotate most of them every week, right? (or is it monthly, I don’t remember, though I did do a Nielsen diary a couple of years ago) I’m sure a lot of people know someone who has done it at some time in the past, but very few would know someone whose viewing counts right now.
I think that the 12,000 number probably refers to the families with TV meters, although that’s not entirely clear. These folks have meters set on their televisions that monitor their watching patterns - not imperfectly, see an interesting Boston Globe article on the subject here. There are also diarists, who only participate for a short time and change often. These are probably the folks that you know.