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Nielsen Will Measure TV ratings Among DVR Users
prostoalex writes "TV ratings publisher Nielsen is one company that got affected by the digital video recorder boom. With 7 million households recording TV shows and watching them on their own schedules, the concept of primetime changes, and the audience reporting is becoming skewed. So now Nielsen is launching a special program for DVR households, which would allow advertisers and TV executives to track the popularity of TV programs. Nielsen plans to distribute paper diaries among the households that use digital video recorder. Last time I did a Nielsen TV rating diary, they paid $5 a week."
Of course they are only likely to get information from people they can easily find, such as Tivo Customers and Sat TV companies who supply boxes with recording cabpabilities.
They will totally miss those using Mythtv ( http://www.mythtv.org/ ) or Freevo ( http://freevo.sourceforge.net/ ) or any other home brew solution.
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Nielsen plans to distribute paper diaries among the households that use digital video recorder.
I got a call from the Nielsen survey guy this morning (who in hell calls at 9:07 on a Saturday morning?) asking if we wanted to take part in the DVR survey. He specifically told me that with the DirecTivo, other than signing the permission for them to monitor the shows I watched/recorded, we wouldn't have to do anything.
With luck, this will result in better data than last time. Last year we were asked to fill out a paper diary, but my wife was hogging the television all week watching the baseball playoffs, so that skewed the results.
You can't just "sign up" to be a Neilson "family". They have to contact you. They study demographics and then invite only certain qualifying households to participate.
The nice thing is, though, if you have any problems with your TVs or cable (etc) service, they will send someone over to repair or fix the problem. Anything to keep you watching... We got free service on our TVs that way.
A negative is that you start to become a slave to your TV, because you're "voting" for your favorite shows. Gotta stay home and watch, you know. I always wondered how many Neilson "families" would turn on the TV to certain shows/channels, even when no one was physically there in ffront of the TV to watch.
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Even without that agreement, Tivo keeps track of what people watch, but says they do it entirely anonymously. Which is why they got to know the "most replayed' moment during the Superbowl half time. I'm surprised Neilson doesn't just pay for that data directly from Tivo. They did that, and I'd even Tivo the Whedon episodes I have on DVD.
Alex.
We recently got rid of the Niesen 'box' in the house I live in. We had four roommates when we started and they didn't really participate. We also know that we are in the two most difficult groups to market to (young women and 25-35 year-old men - yeah, you read that right!) - yet, Nielsen didn't really pay much attention us. I remember a friend who was also doing the survey and he said that they would call his house if they weren't sticking to pressing the 'confirm button' on what looked like antiquated gear (circa 1970's) - the box wold start flashing all of it's lights in a crazed pattern if the person who changed the TV channel didn't also confirm the change with the Nielsen remote. One day, the Nielsen rep came to their door with $50 asking them nicely to be more diligent participants. He did that every month for about three months since they kept it up. At the beginning, they gave us $200 and paid for the monthly land-line phone fee (for their equipment to talk to the local server.)
All of the experience made me curious. I wondered why it took them so long to switch to something more hi-tech. Cable boxes have been out since the 70's. I remember watching Jaws on HBO when I was a kid. We could have easily been a Nielsen house then if they got wise earlier. We didn't give them any useful information in the hopes they would come back to us and say 'it's so important for our statistic pool, here's another $200.'
They never did. We did get Dish with a DVR so that was a great reason to ditch the 'UFO' that roosted on our TV.
One thing they did do was break our VCR when they opened it up to install their sensing equipment. They replaced it with a new one, and then, when they packed up, they gave us a new one in the box because the technician needed to install it at a new house. I think it was refurbished because there was a sticker on the plastic inside that said 'Do Not Return To Retailer' - maybe Nielsen gets them in bulk.
We probably gave them more bunk data than usable. In the end, I guess I'd have to say that we came out on top because I didn't own a VCR with stereo inputs until they came along.
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