Nielsen Struggles To Track Modern Viewing Habits

RobotRunAmok writes "The Nielsen Company has been the principal entity tracking TV shows' popularity, and, by extension, their potential profitability. But as our media consumption practices change, some believe that Nielsen's methods have not kept pace. A new consortium including networks owned by NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Discovery, and Walt Disney — along with major advertisers — is calling for the creation of a new audience measurement service, and planning to solicit bids from outside firms by the fourth quarter of this year. Nielsen says they're not worried about so many of their customers ganging up on them, having just invested more than a billion dollars in research to stay modern. Except that today Nielsen announced they would pointedly not be adding weights to DVR households, and that adding weights for the presence of a personal computer or Internet access in under-represented households would provide 'no significant change or enhancement' to its national TV ratings sample. The pundits deride Nielsen's 'archaic' methodology and 'disco-era tactics,' but others scoff that such a consortium will only 'put the foxes in charge of the henhouse.' Stay tuned..."

Comments

Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie?

[elrous0]

Seriously, is there anyone under the age of 40 who DOESN'T use a DVR anymore? And I don't mean the "I don't even *OWN* a TV!" snobs, I'm talking about average people. I can't imagine going back to watching live TV, and can't believe that Nielsen is still not taking me adequately into account. I think they do finally factor in some DVR's now (contrary to the summary), but only one per household and only under weirdly strict conditions (like having to watch the show within 24 hrs. of its airing).

Okay, I can understand them not weighing us DVR watchers as much as grandma watching her stories on live TV (since we're a lot less likely to actually watch the ads that the Nielsens are all about). But to only count us under a few conditions is to ignore the reality that we're in the 21st century (some of us are even watching *gasp* HD content, which Nielsen is also still undervaluing).

Come on, I'm tired of seeing crap network shows that my great-aunt watches in the top ten and the shows *I* like getting shitcanned for "low ratings." I would even be willing to "opt-in" to a DVR viewing log system if it meant that my viewing habits could save a few decent shows.

Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie?

[Duradin]

It doesn't matter if you like the show.

What matters is that you are seeing the ads. If you're watching it as it is broadcast you can't skip past the commercials. You can leave the room (which is why they crank the volume up for ads) or you can turn the channel (good luck since most other channels will be on a commercial break). So you sit there and watch the ads (that pay for the show) or you somehow respond to the ads (turning the channel, leaving the room).

Let's say there's a new show on Fox with Nathan Fillion. It is wildly popular with the DVR crowd but very few people actually watch the broadcast. The advertisers are going to get grumpy that the prime rates they are paying to have their ads shown during the wildly popular show aren't buying many eyeballs. Advertisers decide to stop paying for the wildly popular show. The show gets axed. Cue DVR rage. Basically, if you're watching it live, you are paying for the show, to some extent everyone else is leeching.

Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie?

[piltdownman84]

DVR's are still out of the financial reach off many people. Maybe its because i'm fresh out of uni and most of my friends got useless degrees, but in my group of friends I'm the only one with a PVR. Shaw up here in Western Canada still wants $600 for a HD-PVR, which is out of reach of alot of people.

Even with a PVR I find myself watching alot of live television for two reasons. One, you really need to watch sports live. Two, my cable signal is garbage and if watching live a sudden drop out for a second or two is an annoyance, but if I'm watching on on the PVR the recording fails. So while the PVR is great to set a bunch of stuff on season passes and have something to watch in my free time, its just not there ... at least from my provider ... to depend on for something you 'have to' watch.

Bad headline?

[clang_jangle]

The headline is inaccurate, as the story is more about how Nielsen isn't struggling to track modern viewing habits.

What's so hard about it

[BSDimwit]

Maybe I am completely naive about this, but it doesn't seem like that hard of a problem to solve. Nielsen should work with cable box and satellite box manufactures/ and embed a viewing habit collection program to collect and send information back to whoever happens to care. This sound bad on the surface, but you make this program user enabled and if the user opts to share their viewing habits, that user's account is billed $5 less per month. The user, when opting in, would be presented with a screen that collects this household's demographic information such as family size, age and gender of the viewers etc, and once that is all setup, the user doesn't have to do anything but watch TV. No logs to keep, no extra boxes or contraptions to deal with. All of the current cable/satellite boxes already have the ability to send data back to mama (pay per view) so, whats a few more bytes of data.

All in all, I think we would all benefit because the networks would know which shows no one cares about and could adjust their programming quicker and the advertisers would have a better idea of how to reach their target demographic and how much they should be paying to do so.

Easy peasy.

Re:Foxes in charge of the henhouse... makes sense

[Trepidity]

The media companies have a vested interest in getting the best audience data they can, so I'd say the "foxes...henhouse" argument is flawed in this case.

Not entirely true--- the media companies make no actual money from audience figures directly, only from advertising. So their vested interest is in getting the best-looking audience data that still looks plausible to advertisers. That's one reason advertisers want a 3rd party to collect the audience data, not the networks; it's less believable for a network to say, "oh yeah, according to our methodology 30 million people watch this show regularly, that'll be $rate please".

It's not about how many people use a DVR .....

[King_TJ]

Let me first say I totally agree with your point. But really, I think this is about something different than what most of us logically think it should be about.

I suspect the networks and advertisers are interested, primarily, in who is tuning in to the provided programming in "real time". Even if they find out that a certain TV series is wildly popular with people who recorded it to watch later? They may still be most fixated on the numbers who thought it was worth interrupting their day or night to watch it, as soon as it hit the airwaves.

I'm not in this industry, but I can see how an advertiser would place a lot of value on knowing their commercial is being viewed in a prompt manner by viewers. (EG. If you want to run an ad talking about a special sale "this weekend only!" at your local sandwich shop or car dealership, the ad is rendered useless to anyone who "gets around to watching it" on their DVR the following week.)

extinction

[Ephemeriis]

Seems to me that Nielsen's metrics are just about useless these days.

How many people actively watch television without a DVR? Wouldn't it be fairly easy for those DVRs to simply report back what shows you're watching? Yeah, I know, privacy and all that... But your average person is just renting it from their cable/dish provider and doesn't have much say in what the box does anyway.

And folks watching television programs through on-line services like hulu or whatever can easily be tracked as well. Just record the number of views a given show's gotten - much like the counters on YouTube.

Hell, even folks who don't use a DVR typically have some kind of cable/dish de-scrambler box... Those could report viewing habits as well.

I certainly understand the appeal of having an impartial party responsible for the data... But it doesn't seem like this kind of data collection should be terribly difficult to do these days. Seems like the bigger challenge would be for viewers who don't want to participate to keep their usage private.

About Time

[MBGMorden]

The studios have to do something sooner or later. The Nielsen way of tracking things sucks. For certain genres of television, the viewing habits of it's audience will tend to shift. If it shifts in a way not tracked by Nielsen, an otherwise good show may be canceled. Science fiction in particular is hurt here as it's audience tends to be the technophile crowd who are just not as likely to watch it broadcast at primetime.

For example, Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which as a series I enjoyed far more than the latest movie) showed terrible Nielsen ratings, yet it's DVR numbers were good, it's foreign market numbers were excellent, and week after week it was among the top downloads at the iTunes store. It was doing good in other areas, just not in the over the air live audience arena, and so it got canned. Hopefully we'll see less of this as studios start tracking things more accurately.