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Nielsen Ratings in the Age of the Internet
alphadogg writes "If everyone started watching '24' or 'CSI' on video iPods or streamed over the Internet — instead of on TV in their living rooms — these top-rated shows would probably go the way of 'Cop Rock.' This is because Nielsen Media Research cannot collect data about what people watch on handheld video-viewing gadgets or from PCs streaming network TV shows. While Nielsen estimates around 90% of TV viewing still happens in homes, it's this burgeoning 10% that TV networks and advertisers are desperate to delve into." Note that this story is obnoxiously spanning 6 pages. For a publication named "Network World" you'd think they'd know better.
It doesn't really matter how you are watching the shows, since the only people who counts are the Nielsen households. So, everybody who isn't a Nielsen household could be downloading the shows and it wouldn't impact the ratings.
Je ne parle pas francais.
It's done by either having a "random" group keep diaries, or by observing their TV set's channel settings via remote sensors. Saying they can't do the same thing for handhelds is ludicrous. At the very least, they could count the number of downloads. Duh.
Have you read my blog lately?
I just don't think we are going to be living in an age where the content providers have to pay Nielsen to sell their own statistics back to them for much longer.
Content providers aren't the relevant customer for Nielson data. Advertisters are.
KFG
When people buy a TV show on iTunes... the money comes in, advertisers or not.
viewing diaries!
Boxes set up in people's homes cost money to make and money to install. It is far cheaper and easier to ask people to keep a simple diary of what they watch and then collect the diaries. I would'nt be surprised if the diaries are kept online now instead of in dead-tree editions in the home.
Hey, there's a great programming project!
Somebody hack Neilson to grab and distort the online diaries. >8^D Maybe we can get Star Trek: Enterprise back on the air. >8^P
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Why do you still need the advertisers?
You mean like the original reason they created cable? You would pay for the cable and not have ads?
Well... That didn't last too long.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Nielsen ratings are worthless anyways. Most CATV systems can collect better and more accurate data themselves from the set top boxes and they are starting to use it for demographics.
Tivo,Replay they both sell their demographics as higher-quality than nielsen data.
Nielsen data was not really relevant anymore when I was still working in advertising.. The sales people used the data from the CATV systems to sell ad's.
Telling a customer that this timeslot or show has X rating is crap compared to telling the customer that XXX,XXX local people were watching the TV channel at X:XXpm when your ad aired.
Nielsen can not give that kind of data.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It is unaccurate and, as I understand it, everyone in the industry knows it.
Not only do they not measure internet viewing, but they don't measure dorm rooms where hundreds of thousands of college students live, or public viewing like sports bars which are packed full of people watching sports every weekend.
Not being able to measure viewing of downloaded shows isn't an entirely new problem, but just makes an existing problem worse.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
When I was growing up in the 70's and early 80's I regularly got disappointed in television. Not because of crappy programming, per se, but it happened with disturbing regularity that some network would get a new show that really piqued my interest, and I'd get right into the show and then it would be quickly cancelled, often after only half a season. Anyways, it was always on account of "poor ratings", and this happened to me so many times while I was growing up, I've completely lost count... but I'd figure probably between 15 to 20 times in my childhood alone. Anyways, I always figured that maybe there just weren't enough people with my tastes that were hooked up into the ratings system.
Then fast forward a couple of decades to 1999. I have my own family, with 4 kids of my own, so we had a really full house. One day someone came to our door who worked for Nielson, the ratings company. This person told us that our house had been selected to participate in the Nielson ratings and asked me if we'd like to participate.
I felt like I had freakin' won the lottery... I was flooded by memories of all those times I was growing up and having shows that I really liked cancelled due to poor ratings and thought that I'd _finally_ get a chance to have a voice... and my favorite shows would not be cancelled. I was extremely interested in the offer, and after talking with the rest of the family with it to see how they would feel about it, I said yes, we'd agree.
They proceeded to hook up their ratings equipment to every television, vcr, and video switch in the house... and connected that to our phone line. They told us it would collect data, and then use our phone line once every night or so to connect to their computer and inform them of our viewing habits. The system was designed so that it would only try to use our phone when it was not in use, and would automatically terminate if another phone was picked up, so it would not interefere with our regular phone use. The video equipment was fairly straightforward... there was one logging unit per television, which Nielson told us we needed to log into whenever we turned on the TV, regardless of what we were turning the TV on for... be it watching a DVD or video, watching regular television, or anything else that needed the TV, we had to log in. Each of us was assigned a single button on the device and all we had to do to log in was press that one button. To log out, we just neede to press the button again, and everybody would automatically be logged out if the television was turned off. The logging device would automatically examine what channel or input device the television was tuned to, as well as the settings of any external video switches to determine if we were watching television or just watching a movie or doing something else with the TV. It would also, regardless of whether the television was on or not, log what channels the VCR recorded... although it could not assign any particular household members to what the VCR did, so I guess the VCR was assigned a "general" category by their system. We didn't have to worry about it, at any rate.
So... what did we get out of this? Well, not a whole lot... we'd get a cash-back rebate on any new video equipment we purchased, regardless of the price (although the rebate was not much, it was still nice), and of course for me, I had a personal interest in participating in the Nielson ratings system... a chance to _finally_ make a difference in the ratings system, as we were told that each person in our household would represent several thousand actual viewers.
Okay... fast forward a few years again, to 2003. Television is utter tripe. We hardly watch any of it at all, because there's just so little of it that's any good. But then a show comes on UPN that looks intriguing. I watch the premiere, and I am instantly hooked. I tell my family about it and the following week we are all logged into the Nielson system watching the show. Everybody in the household love
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'