My first random thought is regarding ratings for TV shows.
Nielson Ratings are the current leaders in this field - that is why shows are kept on the air or canceled - based upon their ratings.
Nielson has only just recently started adding in numbers for (some) people who DVR a program and watch it within 3 days of the original airing.
We have Cox Communications and a DVR (but are not a Nielson Ratings family).
I know that Cox can remotely re-boot my DVR and they can charge me for any On Demand films I watch.
Can’t they also determine which channels I am watching?
Wouldn’t it be wiser to get ratings by simply having the cable companies keeping (anonymous) tabs on who is watching what, when?
Certainly it wouldn’t be that hard for them to say:
“Of 489,576 viewers in Las Vegas on Thursday night, 286,901 were watching ABC from 9-10PM, 187,348 were watching CBS, etc.”
Of course, this might prove that some stations are getting more money than they deserve to get from the cable fees (I am looking at you ESPN!) and others are not getting enough money (USA, FX, HGTV, etc.).
My other random thought is about OnDemand.
If you have a DVR, you can watch new releases of major films for $4.99 - currently they just added Life of Pi.
But you can go to any RedBox and pick up the DVD (or download it on the Internet) for just $1.00.
Wouldn’t film studios be better suited to show these films OnDemand earlier at perhaps a fee of $2.00 and make a bit more money, but keep it cheap enough for people to use this as a viable option for impulse viewing when nothing else is on TV?
Feel free to explain why my thoughts are randomly stupid or wise, or add your own random thoughts.
Could the cable companies track what channel your box is on?
Yes, but they don’t know whether your TV is on. And they don’t necessarily know the demographics of your household.
A (presumably) statistically-distributed system of diaries seems to work OK for the customers the ratings companies have. Of course, they’re subject to gaming by marketing efforts (ie. people are susceptible to write down that they watched “hot” programs).
Not everyone has cable
Not everyone with cable has a box
Advertisers want to know demographic information that your cable provider doesn’t collect. And if your cable company collected and provided it, the results wouldn’t be as anonymous as you’d like.
Concerns that cable companies could manipulate viewership data to negotiate better deals with networks.
As for On Demand, the cable company sets the price, not the movie studio. So far they haven’t considered cutting the price to be worth the additional viewers they’d get.
I know I did this when I was a Neilson household back in the late 70s. Not so much not telling them what I was watching as much as telling them I was watching stuff when I was out on the town or at work. Any system can be gamed.
Well…sorta. I’m in the process of buying some ads on local TV. The sales guy presented me with numbers of households/channel/timeslot that he said came from the cable company. He also said they do not get similar data from DISH or DirectTV.
There is no demographic data on the cable numbers, according to my salesguy…all he can tell me is that X number of households are watching Y channel at Z time. He also has access to Neilson data that is a little more specific, but mostly I’m looking at the broadcast schedule to choose where to place my ads.
How does the cable company know whether the TV is turned on, or that the person isn’t actually watching Tivo or a DVD or streaming something? I’d think their information would be less accurate than the statistical samples.
Plus. depending on what you’re selling, I’d think demographics information would be just as important as sheer numbers.
This is from Wikipedia:
Nielsen television ratings are gathered in one of two ways:
Viewer "diaries", in which a target audience self-records its viewing or listening habits. By targeting various demographics, the assembled statistical models provide a rendering of the audiences of any given show, network, and programming hour.
A more technologically sophisticated system uses Set Meters, which are small devices connected to televisions in selected homes. These devices gather the viewing habits of the home and transmit the information nightly to Nielsen through a "Home Unit" connected to a phone line. The technology-based home unit system is meant to allow market researchers to study television viewing habits on a minute to minute basis,*** seeing the exact moment viewers change channels or turn off their TV***. In addition to set meters, individual viewer reporting devices, such as people meters, have allowed the company to separate household viewing information into various demographic groups, but so far Nielsen has refused to change its distribution of data of ethnic groups into subgroups, which could give more targeted information to networks and advertisers.
I believe HDMI has display-to-box communication and can inform the box of the status of the TV/monitor. And yes, digital cable tracks, records and is capable of reporting everything the user does.
Directly? No. Via concatenated consumer data? You betcher ass, Chollie.
Even without manipulation, a cable company’s numbers are not going to be a random sample. It only counts those who have that cable company, not those using satellite or over-the-air.
Also, as pointed out, the cable company has a vested interest in the ratings; they sell ads and the ratings help set the amount they charge. Neilsen has no interest in the ratings; advertisers (who the ratings are for, ultimately) are going to go to Neilsen because they know Neilsen is impartial.
You’re right. They’re going to be a >99% sample of that population.
Offhand, the only “television” viewers who are not likely to be tracked in their minute-by minute viewing are (1) the decreasing base of over-the-air viewers; (2) most viewers on older analog cable and community systems; and (3) satellite TV viewers who do not enable any network or telephone backchannel.
Which is really not fair to the advertisers, since people who watch via DVR generally don’t watch ads.
But can it tell if the TV is set to a different input? It absolutely can tell if the TV is on and connected or not (my Comcast DVR always displays DVI on the front whenever the TV comes on*) but sometimes the TV is on but you’re watching a Bluray, or playing a video game, or even just watching something on the TV’s built in tuner (none of which causes any sort of message on the DVR’s panel).
Also, I’d wager a hell of a lot of cable boxes are still hooked up via older cables that don’t report didly squat back to the box. Component, s-video, composite, even just coax, you can bet there are people still out there using it.
*[sup][sub]DVI apparently because older revisions of the hardware had DVI ports instead of HDMI ports, but all of the boxes run the same software[/sub][/sup]
Probably not, but the evolution of box-to-monitor connections has been towards more active intercommunication, instead of the monitor just passively accepting whatever’s sent to it. I haven’t looked closely at the tech in a while but I am sure that newer cable boxes can extract more information from the TV or monitor than in previous interations.
Part of this is to give us wondrously brilliant images with easier connection. Part of it is to maintain copy protection right to the viewing pixels. The rest… is not for the consumer’s benefit and pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.