I’d always considered the Neilsen Media Group to be kind of a bass-ackward entity, as I’d always been wary of corporations using statistical representative samples of anything as varied as modern television viewing options – and particularly when most the shows I like keep getting canceled!
Now if the music industry can use SoundScan to track album sales (since 1991!), why hasn’t a similar technology been developed to track what people watch on TV? In this era of V-chips and ‘making every vote count’, why aren’t TV shows tracked more accurately? Would people find pre-installed tracking devices too intrusive?
Other Neilsen questions:
Do Neilsen familes REALLY exist or have we been scammed for 40 years?
Who here has been in, or known of, a real-live Neilsen family? Is there a limit to how long a family can be involved in tracking shows?
Are Neilsen families paid?
Has there ever been an instance where a Neilsen family (or groups of Neilsen familes) has deliberately skew results in a show’s (or a network’s) favor?
“Sweeps Weeks” are decided on year after year so networks can prop up special programmimg to vie for viewer’s attention. Wouldn’t RANDOM Neilsen sampling of viewership result better TV throughout the year instead of a couple of weeks each year?
The last question may be viewed as more of a rant than a query…
FWIW, my roommates and I were a Nielsen “family” a few years ago during sweeps. We did the fill-in diary for a week, for which (IIRC) we were paid a shiny new dollar. :rolleyes:
Thanks for the links, schief2. They answered nearly all of my questions and suspicions, and proved once again how I need to start using the ‘search’ option on the site more often if I ever want to learn anything…
Well, I guess the only question that hasn’t been answered is, “Why hasn’t a more accurate system been employed to measure TV ratings?”
The diary thing sounds just dumb.
TV is such a passive experience, I don’t see how anything significant can be accomplished by having Neilsen participants stop and write anything down. (Especially if they’re watching porn!) I think a more accurate way would be some nominally unintrusive device that works as a modem to your cable or satellite-ready TV set, and relays channel setting changes to some sort of remote recording device. Everytime you flipped the TV, it would note how long you stayed on the new channel… presumably giving an accurate account of “channel-surfing,” too.
Another device can be installed that shuts the TV off after, say 30 minutes of non-activity in the room, if you’re the type that falls asleep in front of the set.
And “Sweeps Week” should be abolished.
Another Neilsen question: how much do the networks PAY the Neilsen Media Group for their information?
Actually, I’m pretty sure they only use the diaries during sweeps weeks (I know ours was just for one week, and we never got another one again). For the rest of the time, they use a system remarkably like the one you describe, according to this Washington Post article:
I thought I’d heard a few years ago that they had some sort of an optical system to automatically detect how many people were in the room (and who!), but it was still buggy. They must’ve scrapped that, I guess.
We are a Neilson family in Canada. Between the two of us we represent 5000 men and 5000 women. When we agreed to sign up we were given a gift basket and told that we would be given $25…have not seen that yet, end of year perhaps? Officially we have agreed to a 5 year term but we can drop out at any time. It is somewhat of a pain in the butt because aside from logging in when you watch T.V.,every time you change the channel you have to confirm the change. At least we don’t have to write it all down, it’s done by remote. If the same channel is left on for over an hour, we have to confirm that we are still watching.
We are not allowed to tell any media that we are a Neilson family because they might try to bribe us to watch particular shows.
If your favourite show gets cancelled, it will probably be our fault. I’m home the most and I watch channels like Discovery, HGTV,…sorry.
About 20 years ago the Neilsen people conferred on us the awesome honor and responsibility of being a Neilsen family.
But it was a completely manual system consisting of a little viewing logbook which was supposed to be placed on top of each TV in the house, and viewers were supposed to log their viewing. Unfortunately I couldn’t get my nearest and dearest to cooperate, as I was just the younger kid in the family.
