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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..."
Also, add in the other forms of digital distribution, and digital cable, can't the source providers just collect their own data?
At least for my viewing habits. I maybe consistently watch maybe 1-2 shows live each week. Throw in a few hours of channel browsing, usually flipping between Discovery Channel, History Channel, Food Network, NatGeo, SciFi (SyFy), or Military Channel. That said, the shows I really watch, I am recording in HD on my custom built Home Theater PC (HTPC) for watching at my leisure, on my own schedule. It might be a week or two later before I watch a show, but I do watch them. And Neilson doesn't even count me. Probably one of the reasons why shows like Futurama were cut in the fist place, only to finally be put back into production from the out-cry and DVD sales numbers (which told them that Neilson's ratings for the show was complete utter BS).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
As a consequence, Nielsen will do whatever it can to stonewall, obfuscate, and generally hide the obvious: the day of Network hegemony is coming to a close.
This doesn't mean the Networks are going to disappear. What it does mean is that the Network business model of delivering motion picture, and the techniques, methods, aesthetics, and processes developed to support that system, is no longer the complete hegemonic force it used to be. In 1948 there was radio and TV and movies and... ummmm... not much else. Today there is broadcast TV, Cable TV, online video, radio, satellite radio, computer games, game consoles, Web2.0 social networks and similar systems (viz 2nd life), podcasts, etc. etc. etc.
The last actual advertisement I paid attention to AT ALL was last week (well, actually this morning - the girl on the billboard was f*cking hott. don't know what she was selling, but damn she was cute...) when I actually clicked on an advert to find out more about a certain brand of eReader (no, not the kindle...) So, that particular advert was successful, and it was online. Not on TV.
That's the mindshare competition TV is dealing with, and what Nielsen refuses to deal with. TV could actually GROW in size, and still be increasingly marginalised by the explosion of all the other media.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
If your viewing habits include skipping all (or timeshifting beyond a couple days) the commercials that pay for the show I don't see why they should give DVR viewers much weight.
It's the eyeballs on commercials that count, not how many people like the show (but not enough to watch it realtime or to watch the commercials). If you like the show but don't want to watch it when it is broadcast watch it off the company's site. Then at least you'll get counted in a way that matters.
Heresy! Paying consumers $5/month for their personal data would give them the dangerous notion that they own it and have some right to control how it is used. Not to mention, any money not given to a shareholder or a C-level is money wasted.
Some people.
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.
You're probably right about Nielsen not accounting for your demographic, but on the flip side, I don't think your demographic is in the majority.
I'm an average person under 40. I watch TV, but I don't use a DVR. Most of my friends don't either. This is a big country. I don't think you can make generalizations based on your own demographic.
But I think most people who watch TV 8 hours a day will have pretty small disposable income. For a family of four, going from 25K a year income to 50K a year income, the total income ratio is just 2, but the disposable income ratio is going to be something like 4 or even 8. The profit margins are huge in the disposable income expenditure. When it comes to bread, milk and gas, the profit margins are very tight. That means, it is better to snag 1 hour of a family with large income than to fight to get 8 hours from a low wage earning family.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
We were a Nielsen family for a couple of years, up until about March. The amount of equipment that they attached to the TV and all the associated devices was staggering. We also had a TV in the bedroom that contained a DVD player. They took the TV apart and put lots of wires inside and a box on the outside. Some how they amanged to break a VCR during the installation, which they replaced. Both TVs in the house had a complete PC attached and ran a separate wireless network as well as connecting to the house phone lines. There were zillions of wires and lots of little boxes behind the TV. If the whole gamisch didn't call in daily to report on us for a day or two, the technician would schedule a visit and pound on his PC for an hour or so and then leave, satisfied that he's done something. Last March, during the Final Four, our old 1994 27" Sony Trinitron died and when I went shopping for a new TV, I decided that it was time for Nielsen to go. It was an interesting experience but I was very unimpressed with the complexity of their equipment. Now I know what a modern Rube Goldberg device looks like.
Even is there was a DVR-viewing log, would it save your shows? Ok, you watch it on DVR, but chances are you don't watch the ads. An advertiser would be foolish to pay as much for an ad if actual "ad viewership" isn't all that great. So the show is less profitable for ABC, despite how cool it is, and is canned.
?
What filtering?
I just set up for cable internet...TV (extended basic, and unscrambled HDTV) is free...just put a splitter on the wire.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
One thing to consider is that advertisers are already adapting to the use of DVRs. Yes, they still have commercials, but there is also a considerable amount of product placement. Consider the NBC show "Chuck" and its Subway product placement. Before the "Save Chuck" campaign even started, Subway maintained that this was their best product placement/commercial deal in years. It was well placed and quite amusing.
And guess who saw it. It wasn't just the old fogies who refuse to move into the modern age, but also the younger generation with our newfangled DVRs and PCs.
This is why having ALL of the ratings is important. Just because DVRs exclude most of the commercials, that doesn't mean that these viewers aren't important to the show's advertisers. The advertisers would just have to push into new ways of advertising outside of the standard commercial.
PS. I'll gladly sacrifice 2 minutes an episode to gain the 58 minutes of hilarity that is Chuck.
PPS. I know that the episode isn't really an hour long and that a bunch of time is cut out for commercials, but that's not the point.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
MythTV...it takes a bit of patience and effort, but, well worth it in the in and will do what you want.
If you google around a bit, I believe you can find, for sale, MythTV boxes already put together as a turnkey item for you.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The SyFy channel show Eureka has done a lot of product placement as well. It's obvious, but they handle it either in a low-key or tongue-in-cheek manner. Last season I think it was Degree anti-perspirant as the major sponsor. Right now it seems to be Subaru. I can deal with this kind of placement as long as they don't get too ridiculous about it and it doesn't start having a negative impact on the show.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I want a step better. I want a web interfaced TV show, where at any point, I can pause the show, hover over something I see that I like, and have it tell me who makes it, and if I click on it, have it take me to a shopping site to buy the product. Now that would be effective product placement. Like that jacket? Buy it with a click. Think Fargo's car is cool? Click on it to find your local dealer. Think that maternity shirt is adorable? Order one for your wife within seconds if you enable Amazon's one click show based interface.
Want to just watch the show? Hey, it's commercial free, brought to you by Amazon.com - enjoy!
Think of the money that could be made on these types of impulse purchases?!
Before commenting on the Bible, please read it first
I'm at Nielsen now- Nielsen had a spin-off called NetRatings that tracked the internet with a panel that pushed 60K at one point. Nielsen purchased NetRatings in 2007, and the panel is now over 200k households. Although there are some quality issues, we do have a descent handle on the internet space, including streaming video.
$2/episode is a lot of money. If you watch an hour of TV a night(way below average), that's about 3 shows once you cut out the ad time. Even if you only do that on week nights, that's $30 a week or $120 a month. Way too much to spend on TV.
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