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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..."
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.
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?!
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