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The Nielsen Family Is Dead
An anonymous reader writes "An article at Wired walks us through how the so-called Nielsen Family, responsible for deciding which shows were good and which were flops since the '70s, isn't the be-all, end-all of TV popularity anymore. Quoting: 'Over the years, the Nielsen rating has been tweaked, but it still serves one fundamental purpose: to gauge how many people are watching a given show on a conventional television set. But that's not how we watch any more. Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Roku, iTunes, smartphone, tablet—none of these platforms or devices are reflected in the Nielsen rating. (In February Nielsen announced that this fall it would finally begin including Internet streaming to TV sets in its ratings.) And the TV experience doesn't stop when the episode ends. We watch with tablets on our laps so we can look up an actor's IMDb page. We tweet about the latest plot twist (discreetly, to avoid spoilers). We fill up the comments section of our favorite online recappers. We kibitz with Facebook friends about Hannah Horvath's latest paramour. We start Tumblrs devoted to Downton decor. We're engaging with a show even if we aren't watching it, but none of this behavior factors into Nielsen's calculation of its impact.'"
I look at the pirate sites to see what's popular on TV. That's a truer reflection of what the general public wants to watch, because the seed and leech count isn't some complex proprietary formula. While fakes do pop up, with companies trying to poison the peer population to discourage downloading, the protocol is self-correcting and it is really just further evidence of its popularity. It represents an intentional and willful effort to watch these shows, not just a casual interest because it feels less lonely than leaving the TV on to blare commercials while you do something else. If you want to know which shows are popular, not just locally, but internationally then torrent sites are really the best measure of a show's actual popularity. And it's not limited to TV either; A movie's true popularity is also reflected in the download count, moreso than an imdb rating.
You can't trust for-profit organizations to give fair an unbiased numbers -- for enough money, they're only too happy to rig the system. There's companies whose sole reason for existance is to push books onto the New York Times' best seller lists. Because sales data and other information is all kept hidden behind a wall of corporate proprietary data, it's possible to rig the system.
The pirates... you can't rig the system. Either it's popular, or it isn't. No games, no bullshit.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Off an on for years, single parents I guess is a demographic they care about but they make it VERY clear that it is NOT just OTA TV anymore. if you are playing games, watching YouTube, whatever? They want you to fill that in. I even told them last time they asked me "You DO know I don't even watch OTA TV anymore? that everything I enjoy is online?" and they said "That's fine, just write down at the bottom of the page what you were doing instead of OTA TV" and I guess it made them happy as I was asked to do it again about 6 months ago.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
These days Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, etc. know not only if you watched a show, but how many times you watched it, where you paused, which parts you re-watched, etc. (FYI, hook up Wireshark or Firefox's web console and see for yourself what information is being logged!)
The quantity and quality of the data is better than ever. As more people switch from broadcast and cable to online streaming, why would you need a random sample like the "Nielsen family"? It seems so blunt compared to the accurate real-time data that streaming services can provide.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
You can rig it. There's little to stop you from downloading something many times.
;). But for now the counts are probably a fair reflection of a movie's popularity.
It'll be interesting if Hollywood does it
I look at the pirate sites to see what's popular on TV. That's a truer reflection of what the general public wants to watch, because the seed and leech count isn't some complex proprietary formula.
The demographic that gets/views torrents is skewed towards the technologically minded. Contrary to the prevailing slashdot wisdom, this site is not 'the general public'. Sure, the actual general public is closer to the slashdot demo than, say, 15 years ago, but they are not identical.
The problem with pirate sites is monetization. Let's suppose that the number of downloads of Game of Thrones from The Pirate Bay is the most accurate assessment of its popularity. Further, let's posit that 90% of the views come from that. Why does it matter to HBO? How do they recoup the development costs from a TPB viewer? And it matters not whether it is HBO, A&E, or NBC. Someone has to pay actors, writers, directors, etc. Until there is a better method of determining paying customers/viewers, there is still some relevance to traditional ratings. How much and to what degree, we can argue (well, you can. I'm not interested in those minutiae).
So yes, the viewership through pirate sites is interesting for help in determining popularity, but not necessarily in determining what gets made. The reign of 'non-scripted' shows as an example, is as much due to decreased costs of production (especially avoiding the WGA and DGA) at least as much, if not more than how popular they are.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Yep, maybe I'm just old, but I've never used any of "Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Roku, iTunes, smartphone, tablet" to watch tv. I don't know who Hannah Horvath is (and no I'm not going to google it, and not interested in anyone responding to this post to enlighten me about who she is), I've never watched an episode of Downton Abbey, ever visited Tumblr, and I don't have a twitter account. Also, I have no idea what a "kibitz with Facebook friends" is.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Of course, the moment that the industry decides that it is useful, it will cease to be useful.
Hulu might make a bit of sense to use, since it's people actively seeking and watching content. The biggest issue I see would be availability.
I had thought TV was dead.
You can rig it. There's little to stop you from downloading something many times.
BitTorrent Trackers don't count downloads - they count the number of active seeders and leechers.
While you are connected to the tracker and downloading a file, your session will add 1 to the leech count. When the download completes, the leech count is decremented 1. If you delete/move this file and initiate another download, this will simply temporarily add 1 to the leech count again.
Sure it is game-able. You could have multiple clients on different ports simultaneously downloading and hope that the tracker doesn't amalgamate all connections from the same IP to count as one. This, however, would be very taxing on your connection not to mention extremely resource intensive, especially with the wide adoption of crypto in BitTorrent.
Even if this was actively rigged, would it be any worse off than the Nielsen system? Can we honestly believe that it is not completely rigged? The participants are known ahead of time. Is it not possible that they be chosen according a particular agenda or otherwise enticed.
[Rent This Space]
Nielsen has one and only purpose - to help price ad-time buys. Shows on bittorrent have had the ads stripped out. The people watching those versions might as well not exist for all that Nielsen's customers care.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
For something to be made, there needs to be a measurable minimum viable audience. If the audience can't be measured, it doesn't count. If you're using advertising to fund the production, you've got to hit a certain number of eyeballs in a certain short period. SyFy seemed to have hit this problem with Eureka and Stargate Universe. People were watching - but not enough to cover the costs of making it. So while we might be getting a great variety and diversity of content - that very diversity is fragmenting the audience so much that a lot of stuff becomes financially unviable. The Neilsen Family provided stifling homogeneity, but it also did sustain a standard of TV production that will be difficult to replicate in a future of fragmented micro-audiences.
The problem with pirate sites is monetization. Let's suppose that the number of downloads of Game of Thrones from The Pirate Bay is the most accurate assessment of its popularity. Further, let's posit that 90% of the views come from that. Why does it matter to HBO? How do they recoup the development costs from a TPB viewer?
HBO now have strong evidence supporting the immense popularity of the show. This allows them to sell broadcasting rights, merchandising rights and gives them an enormous amount of free publicity in new and emerging markets.
Sure 'Castle' has a much higher Nielsen rating but how many people would seriously buy a $50 Castle poster to hang on their wall or buy a Collectors Edition Richard Castle figurine.
[Rent This Space]
How to fit in:
1. Buy an expensive big screen TV (The newest 3D model should suffice)
2. Buy a HiFi sound system (definitely surround sound, bonus points for anything higher than 5.1)
3. Watch television on a handheld device, with a tiny screen and crappy speakers
4. ????
5. Profit!!
At first I thought this was another American gun massacre story.
do you really think torrenters are a representative sample of the general population ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
a) He didn't mention youtube.
b) Because video playback isn't the only function of computers?
I'm not watching TV since 2005. Such a waste of time.
Unlike slashdot
But I know that Nielsen actually asks for this kind of information. If you're watching something on Hulu they want to know.
OP said: "A movie's true popularity is also reflected in the download count". Go figure which download that means.
OP also talked about the "seed and leech count" and "pirate sites" which points to BitTorrent.
As for gaming the leech count it's not going to be as resource intensive if you don't actually download stuff at a high rate. I'm not even sure if the various tracking protocols require you to actually download stuff. Or check that the peers you advertise actually exist.
Good point. I guess one could connect to the tracker and announce that they are seeding/leeching and simply drop all incoming connections. This is highly probable, though the multitude of leechers coming from the same IP / IP range is sure to tip of the tracker maintainers and BitTorrent community quite promptly. The community will likely respond with a patch to count only 1 connection per IP and to disregard counts for inactive downloads/uploads. As OP said:
the protocol is self-correcting and it is really just further evidence of its popularity.
[Rent This Space]
The demographic that gets/views torrents is skewed towards the technologically minded.
Then explain to me the popularity of Jersey Shore on the Pirate Bay.
Contrary to the prevailing slashdot wisdom, this site is not 'the general public'.
I'm sorry, you make me choke on my mountain dew. Slashdot? Wisdom? I think you have this site confused for another. And besides, we weren't talking about slashdot, we were talking about The Pirate Bay, which is the 73rd most visited site on the internet according to Alexia. But please, continue...
The problem with pirate sites is monetization.
Okay, just so we're clear: You're saying a website whose primary purpose is to allow the free distribution of copyrighted materials has a problem with monetization?
Let's suppose that the number of downloads of Game of Thrones from The Pirate Bay is the most accurate assessment of its popularity. Further, let's posit that 90% of the views come from that. Why does it matter to HBO?
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about accurately assessing the popularity of a show, which is what Nielsen ratings are supposed to do. I wasn't aware that this had anything to do with the price of tea in China... or the price of an HBO subscription for that matter.
Someone has to pay actors, writers, directors, etc.
Again, and that has what to do with the price of tea in China? We're looking at methods of assessing the popularity of a show, and the pros and cons of each method. Who writes the paycheck out to those people has exactly dick to do with that.
Until there is a better method of determining paying customers/viewers, there is still some relevance to traditional ratings.
Ah. So you're moving the goal posts. Well, allow me to move them back. Let's say you're in the market for a new car. New car by definition means you're going to be buying from a dealer, or from the manufacturer. So the market for used cars is therefore totally irrelevant, right? Wrong. Even though you're going to a different seller, the laws of supply and demand apply equally to both, and the reasons people buy a used car are similar to the reasons they buy a new car. So if a car has a strong value on the used car market, it's going to have an impact on the price, and popularity, of the new car market as well. Whether the customers are paying or not may matter to the producers of the show, but it has little or no impact on whether or not the viewing public wants to watch the show. And I'm willing to bet that if 10% of Game of Thrones is pirated, then about 10% of NCIS is going to be pirated too, even though they're different shows. And if NCIS is more popular than Game of Thrones amongst the non-paying customers, it's probably going to be more popular amongst the paying customers as well because they're the same demographic.
So yes, the viewership through pirate sites is interesting for help in determining popularity, but not necessarily in determining what gets made.
Whoa there cowboy. Again: China. Tea. Price of. We aren't discussing the criterion for how TV shows get selected for production, we're discussing the pros and cons of a ratings system for shows that are already in production.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Yes, pretty much every 'legit' method of viewing a show on the internet has the ability to be way more accurate than the current method of nielsen ratings because they can count every single viewing by their entire customer base rather than sampling and/or relying on the honesty (and mental accuity) of nielsen families.
But piracy? They don't care. Frankly, I see that as a benefit of being a pirate, less surveilllence. On the other hand, it isn't scalable given the current model of commercial-funding. If it switches from ad-time buys to product-placement, then piracy stats will become meaningful (and shows will become very bland, no big money client is going to want to be associated with a show that might piss even a sliver of their customer base). If we go to something better, a la the ransom model, then it won't really matter all that much.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'm not watching TV since 2005. Such a waste of time.
Unlike slashdot
hey, it took me only 30 minutes to finish slashdot this morning. Now I'm off to work and see you at night.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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That's dumb. The main value of Nielsen is not that it measures popularity. It measures viewership of the shows (and thus ads) that air on TV.
Ad rates are tied to Nielsen ratings. And this has not changed. So the Nielsen family is as relevant as ever.
Sure, Hulu stats matter too, to fix the price of ads that air on Hulu.
It's amazing how many people think that somehow because they don't watch TV that it is not longer relevant what TV ratings are.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
So basically any TV show that doesn't target the 20-40yo white nerd male demographic isn't popular?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The only evidence they have is that the show is popular with a demographic that isn't making them any money.
If anything, it's reason to terminate the show and replace it with something that attracts non-downloading viewers.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Don't pretend you've never used youtube. If that's the case, why do you even need a color monitor or a graphics card?
Never said I didn't use youtube, but since you ask, I've certainly never watched an entire episode of a tv show using youtube.
The main reason I need a graphics card and a colour monitor at work is that the 3d mechanical and optical simulation software I use to design stuff requires an openGL capable graphics card to display some types of results.
I generally don't use my computer to watch video - I have a nice big flat screen tv at home to do that.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
The demographic that gets/views torrents is skewed towards the technologically minded.
Then explain to me the popularity of Jersey Shore on the Pirate Bay.
Most popular Jersey Shore episode on TPB: s06e13 with 104 seeds and 4 leeches.
Most popular Big Bang Theory: s06e19 with 19202 seeds and 538 leeches.
There... "popularity" of Jersey Shore on TPB explained.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
They DO measure streaming as well, at least here in Sweden. I've got their equipment hooked up to my TV. They snoop on the sound from my media player, game console, etc, and on the sound from the TV to the receiver. This way they know what piece of equipment made what sound when, and by using (I guess) some kind of fingerprint algorithm they can compare it to a database of known shows/movies/whatever, and compile the result.
This is not a sig.
...but the rest of his relatives as well?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
There... "popularity" of Jersey Shore on TPB explained.
Last airing of Jersey Shore: December 7, 2012
Last airing of Big Bang: Today.
I think I see a flaw in your cunning assessment. If you look for a single episode of Big Bang uploaded on or before the same date, you get about the same count: 128 seeds, 2 leeches, respectively. When Jersey Shore isn't on its off-season, those numbers will be a lot higher. But I can't fault you for not knowing that torrents of TV shows tend to be most popular when first released, and then quickly drop in both seed and leech count... I mean, it's not something the average person would know.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I think this article, and probably many of the comments, shows how little people understand of how the ratings and broadcast networks' business model works.
The "family" has been dead for years, ratings-wise. The only numbers that count -- at all -- are adults 18-49, and within that group women 18-34 are particularly valued. That's why singing and dancing competitions rule the airwaves. If you are under 18 or older than 49 your TV viewing habits do not matter to advertisers, they do not matter to networks. An 100 million kids could watch a prime time TV show, and it will still get canceled if not enough adults are watching.
Why? Because TV networks do not have viewers as customers, it's the advertisers that pay their bills. And the advertisers have decided that those are the only age ranges worth selling to, on prime-time TV.
Online, DVD sales, international sales do NOT bring any revenue whatsoever to TV networks, and no matter how popular a show is off of a US TV set, it is worthless if it does not have an high rating in the key demo. Unless -- and only, unless -- the Network is also the production company for that show. (but most are not) Production companies do make money from DVDs online purchases, rights and online ads -- so a company (such as amazon or Hulu) can bypass the Networks and produce successfully online, as is now happening.
I do disagree with the advertisers age ranges, and feel they could monetize the younger and older audiences as well. But I do also understand why they feel they can reach these audiences easily without any need to pay for expensive TV ads.
We are probably reaching a transition point in TV viewing anyway. A business model like the MLB.TV model is one that probably works best. A worldwide 24/7 online TV channel paid for by subscription and/or advertising. It provides full demographic info in real time, allows one-click purchasing to firms, and it allows for long-tail and niche programming too. That is a much better model for advertisers and viewers -- but not too good for the network middlemen, unless they jump on that bandwagon right now.
As an aside, similar is true for movies -- which have a totally different demographic (12-24 usually). Long, long gone are movies like "The Sand Pebbles". Why? Because adults do not go to the cinema in sufficient numbers to matter, unless they are taking their kids to see a kids movie. There is very little overlap between TV and movies in terms of significant audience. Movies are only for children, and TV is only for adults these days (and female adults mostly too, since men are easy targets through sports).
If he was wearing a brown coat I'm sure there would be plenty of people who'd snap it up
Good point. I guess one could connect to the tracker and announce that they are seeding/leeching and simply drop all incoming connections. This is highly probable, though the multitude of leechers coming from the same IP / IP range is sure to tip of the tracker maintainers and BitTorrent community quite promptly. The community will likely respond with a patch to count only 1 connection per IP and to disregard counts for inactive downloads/uploads.
Actually, just such a patch has been built into all mainstream bittorrent clients for years. Clients will only accept 1 connection at a time from a given IP address. And if the data provided is incorrect, after a certain number of bad chunks (defined in the client options, but typically around 3-5), it will be banned.
That said, some trolls did try to interfere with the downloading DVD screener copies this past year right around the time the Emmy's were being voted on by registering thousands of fake peers with the trackers, in a sort of DDoS. The reasoning is believed to be that if they could lower the effective download rate or otherwise make it take a long time to download the torrent, people would give up. Unfortunately for them, their cunning plan failed to consider that computers do not "give up"; After a few hours, all of their fake peers had been attempted (and banned by each other participating client), so while the length of time did increase for the torrent, it was not by an appreciable amount -- it doesn't take long to send 68 byte packets to a few thousand, or even ten thousand, unique IP addresses, and you don't need to get more than a handful of non-fakes to get your download up to full speed.
The other, more successful, method was to seed fake torrents with similar names and filesizes to the legitimate ones, thus forcing people to waste large amounts of bandwidth to get rick-rolled (proverbially speaking). The files would be corrupt, have severely distorted video and/or audio, or simply be a "Shame on you" advert repeated over and over. Very shortly after this, all the major torrent sites introduced the notion of "verified" torrents, and allowed anyone to rank a torrent, or otherwise flag it as crap. The practice has since stopped for the same reason spam e-mail usually doesn't make it through: A web of trust is a simple, yet powerful way, to sort the chaffe from the wheat.
So while there are ways to attack the bittorrent protocol, they are expensive and only result in a small loss of time and effort. For this reason, these attacks aren't common anymore, though less-technically minded groups (I'm looking at you, form-letter enforcement companies) perenially make the attempt thinking nobody's ever done it before. :)
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
And what would you bet that a Nielsen family 'just happens' to develop more sophisticated tastes now that someone is watching...
The demographic that gets/views torrents is skewed towards the technologically minded.
Then explain to me the popularity of Jersey Shore on the Pirate Bay.
The bias is not towards technologically minded people (what is this 1998?), it's towards people who use the Internet, i.e., everyone under 30. The Boomers are not likely to download torrents because they grew up with TV sets and, by and large, aren't very tech savvy. They might get DVDs of Mad Men through Netflix, but that's about it. Someone born in 1994 grew up with the Internet and is much more likely to be sitting in a dorm room downloading TV shows. (And we all know that young people have terrible taste in TV, movies, and especially music and have no respect for front lawns.)
As a technologically minded, but not-so-young-anymore consumer of media, I've notice that "online ratings" frequently give low scores to shows/movies about raising kids, getting old, dealing with mid-life issues, etc., but love crap like Pokeymon and the Jersey Shore. I'm always fascinated by the critic/audience split on Rotten Tomatoes for that reason; who actually rates stuff on Rotten Tomatoes? No one that remembers the Sixties, I bet. I haven't quantified it or anything, I just know that something that is popular on Reddit is bound to make me feel old.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
Yep, maybe I'm just old, but I've never used any of "Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Roku, iTunes, smartphone, tablet" to watch tv. I don't know who Hannah Horvath is (and no I'm not going to google it, and not interested in anyone responding to this post to enlighten me about who she is), I've never watched an episode of Downton Abbey, ever visited Tumblr, and I don't have a twitter account. Also, I have no idea what a "kibitz with Facebook friends" is.
I'm right there with you, and I'm not even that old... young enough that I feel peer pressure to watch Downton Abbey just to get all the references to it in other shows. But I don't watch OTA TV either--I use a HTPC.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
This is hilarious, Downton Abbey was clearly aimed at the older demographic in the UK, and is, in fact, largely watched by them. As most period dramas are. Are you guys saying that it's a young person's show in the US?
I have no idea. I only know that it was parodied on How I Met Your Mother, endlessly pushed at NPR pledge drives, and casually referenced in various media to which I am exposed... do young people give money to NPR?
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
the moment VHS and Beta came on the market and allowed us to tape our shows, that's when Neilsen became obsolete. That and the fact that there are certain types of shows which timeslot and popularity have no relationship. We are empowered to watch a TV on our own time by being able to record it. Neilsen ratings have been a failure for a long time, but then again, the entire sponsoring mechanism behind funding a show isn't all that good either.. Look at shows like Stargate SG-1 who didn't rely on sponsors.. lasted 10 seasons and spun off 2 other shows and direct to movie DVDs, etc..
Not sure how you define "young person". I'm 30, my wife is about the same age, and she's a huge fan as are many of her friends in the same age group.
And what would you bet that a Nielsen family 'just happens' to develop more sophisticated tastes now that someone is watching...
Neilsen attempted to use me as a "Nielsen family" once. I watch TV maybe once a week, don't have cable, am more likely to view a DVD than a broadcast program, and get most of my radio off the Internet.
You REALLY don't want my opinions shaping what shows get killed.
You said that you are "young enough that I feel peer pressure to watch Downton Abbey" - which I found odd, given that although it's a very popular show in the UK, being young would not increase the peer pressure to watch it.
People of all ages watch all sorts of shows, and indeed Downton Abbey is so popular that people of all ages must be watching it. No, I was responding to the comment "young enough that I feel peer pressure to watch Downton Abbey", which suggested that Downton Abbey's audience was skewed younger, whereas I think in the UK it would be skewed older. And just to answer your specific point, let's call 40 the midpoint.
They should care about them because they are potential customers. Sure, some will never pay, but some would if the same media was available for a reasonable price. No ads, no DRM, just a high quality MKV for say 50 cents (Euro/US).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Nielsen is a sampling from the United States so using BT doesn't meet their criteria since it is global.
That in itself shows that Nielsen should fizzle out.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/videostar ..Flash Version ..YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiB0VgOKojg
Pirate sites show you what's popular on TV with the average user who is knowledgeable enough to know how to pirate TV shows; or their girlfriends/wives. It doesn't tell you what the general public wants to watch. None of my son's grandparents/aunts/uncles would fall into that category. My plumber wouldn't; my finish carpenter wouldn't, my drywaller doesn't even have e-mail, my friend the lawyer is also right-out, my doctor is not represented... Many people are not represented in your statistics... On the upside, Firefly would probably not have been cancelled.
Yes, you keep spending all your time at work. And don't socialize with your friends or co-workers who might talk about The Walking Dead or Dexter at lunch... You just sit at your desk and munch on your salad while you work really hard; then you go home and code up a storm before bedtime..
The rest of us will maybe go out with friends, maybe play some Ultimate or go for a bike ride and then perhaps watch a bit of TV before bedtime...
The data on pirate sites tends to reflect a target demographic that pirates movies, which may be ineffective if you're attempting to sell ads.
Also, some shows don't show up on Hulu, or netflix... so many networks have their own websites, like cbs shows are on their own network website cbs.com, which Hulu will point to, but really is not a reflection of the viewership. Hulu really gets nothing for pointing to their site, other than an indication that people are searching for the show. Some Shows have sites dedicated to their shows too... And that's if you can find it. And YouTube performs the same sort of service... or amazon, and then that doesn't count cable and digital broadcasting... but is there something that puts all this information together?
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Except just like all statistical models, it is not the entire population.
And in fact, we know it is just one particular part of it. Yes it is a far bigger sample size, but who is to say that tech savvy pirates are at all a good indicator of what everyone else is watching.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I look at the pirate sites to see what's popular on TV. That's a truer reflection of what the general public wants to watch, because the seed and leech count isn't some complex proprietary formula. While fakes do pop up, with companies trying to poison the peer population to discourage downloading, the protocol is self-correcting and it is really just further evidence of its popularity. It represents an intentional and willful effort to watch these shows, not just a casual interest because it feels less lonely than leaving the TV on to blare commercials while you do something else. If you want to know which shows are popular, not just locally, but internationally then torrent sites are really the best measure of a show's actual popularity. And it's not limited to TV either; A movie's true popularity is also reflected in the download count, moreso than an imdb rating.
You can't trust for-profit organizations to give fair an unbiased numbers -- for enough money, they're only too happy to rig the system. There's companies whose sole reason for existance is to push books onto the New York Times' best seller lists. Because sales data and other information is all kept hidden behind a wall of corporate proprietary data, it's possible to rig the system.
The pirates... you can't rig the system. Either it's popular, or it isn't. No games, no bullshit.
You're making the assumption that torrents are downloaded by a representative sample of the global audience. It's not, it's skewed towards "geeks"
However neilson doesn't care about how many people watch a given tv show, they care about how many watch the adverts.
Like it or not, American idol and the like attract a large number of viewers. These people watch it live as braindead tv, and therefore watch adverts.
People time shifting, which I'd guess is how most people watch quality tv, will skip the adverts. People downloading never even see the adverts.
This is a problem for networks that rely on advertising
One quiet Sunday morning in 2007 at around 8:00 am, I received a call. It was from a survey company asking if I would talk to them about taking a survey. I politely explained I was on the "Do Not Call" list and requested that they don't call again. The woman on the other end of the phone was aghast at my response. She responded, "...but were the Nielson Ratings company", to which I promptly responded, "So." Again she was floored at the fact that I would not take the survey and didn't care it was the Nielson Ratings. She stammered, "But were the prestigious Nielsons Ratings Company." and she said something else still trying to convince me to take their survey. I finally responded, (paraphrased) "I don't care who your are at 8:00 am on a Sunday morning, you woke me up for some survey that I don't want to take, good bye." I then promptly hung up.
I don't care who you are, if I politely inform you that I don't want to take your call, simply be gracious enough to not argue with me and end the call.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
If it switches from ad-time buys to product-placement
Product placement can't always fill the needs of an advertiser. It works well for food, clothing, and cars among others. It's much less simple for things like insurance, otc drugs, or other TV shows. It makes syndication less attractive. And it's *terrible* for localization. There are plenty of smaller businesses that can afford local media buys but have neither the budget nor the desire for a national one. But with product placement, that's difficult at best.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Sorry, but I abhor network television. The constant litany of crime scene investigation shows is definite proof of a dumbing down of society. Crime shows are essentially the same story told week after week after week with only minor changes to the who, what, where, why, and how of forensic investigation. I pretty much believe there are no real writers anymore on these shows, only a computer churning out templated scripts.
The moment a show comes out with a plot arc that spans multiple episodes the idiot masses turn away because it is too difficult for them to maintain a connection between multiple 43 minute episodes after several days. Almost every non-serial show is yanked off the air, often before it can even complete a full season. Instead the idiot masses prefer predictability and repeatability, and the show better conclude its plot at the end of 42 minutes.
And don't get me started on "reality" TV. Not just Survivor and its spin-offs, but the slew of shows about hicks trapped in their homes because they bought too much shit and are too lazy to clean up after themselves, or even dumber shows about hicks trading shit to other hicks, or hicks in the swamp, or hicks looking for ghosts. I mean when the American Mid-West and South become one of the biggest entertainment zones in the world. Those channels that spew out this kind of trash are owned by all the network channel parent companies realizing that for near zero investment they can entrap millions into believing they are better then the hicks they are watching on TV, but clearly are directly on par with those people. Hick shows are subsidizing crime investigation shows and its all easy money for networks because there is no integrity at all in television, if there ever was.
And finally in the 500+ channel universe the viewers are so spread out between all this vapid content the idea of getting 20+ million viewers concentrated enough to watch something that is worth while to advertisers is getting much more difficult. Unless its the American Idol finaly or Superbowl, its impossible to get more then a few million people watching TV live at a given moment in time. Distribution companies realize its not about the ad revenue from one show any more, its about spreading out garbage on 20 other channels which gets the most viewership. If people are not watching CSI at that particular moment, its probably because they are watching some overweight pampered 6 year old on crack yelling at the camera about how beautiful she is.
So, yes, Neilsen is dead because its irrelevant. When 20+ years of historical data shows that crime shows and reality TV dominate ratings, and these shows are spread out over 500 channels the idea of audience size is a dead concept; what is the point of trying to find out what the average dumb viewer wants to watch on TV at any given moment when it is all just money-making garbage anyways.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
OK, now explain to me the popularity of the Big Bang Theory?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm not saying that for love of Nielsen (because shows I've loved got screwed by the ratings system), but basically, TV shows have two models for monetization outside of PBS:
1: Give the shows away over the air and sell ads to pay for it.
2: Sell access to the channel at a premium and make the shows worthy of the premium.
The first covers all network TV and virtually all of basic cable - even though the cable companies pay to carry the basic cable channels. The second covers HBO, Showtime, etc. In the premium model, they might care about non-traditional ways of engaging with content. Because it increases interest and loyalty, thereby driving up demand for the channel - which either can result in a better deal for the channel or more subscribers.
But for a traditional channel, all they care about is the ads, who views them, when they are viewed, and if they are viewed. Looking up info on IMDB doesn't help them, ordering the season on DVD is a nice bonus but not essential, browsing the show website doesn't help them. TV channels sell ads, and they want to sell them to the right people at the right times. Viagra ads don't run during Bugs Bunny cartoons. Breakfast cereal ads don't run during Matlock (just to use obvious examples). Cadillac doesn't advertise on a WWE show, but Kia might. They want to know who the audience is and how big it is. DVRs don't help them that much, though they are awesome for us.
The fragmentation of the TV market and the explosion of channels makes it exponentially tougher to handle the advertiser-based market properly, but still the Nielsen data is the most useful metric that they have. It needs to be updated for the modern era for sure, but it still provides the raw data needed to sustain the ad-based model.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
nonsense, we spend a half hour doing slashdot AT work, the catch up on the hulu.....see how efficient that is? plenty of time for friends when we're not being paid...
Actually, the basic premise seems to be that Nielsen is irrelevant as a metric because of these outlets, and that premise is wrong. The whole and sole point of Nielsen isn't to determine how many people are actually watching the show...it's actually to figure out how many people are watching the advertising. Yes, yes, I know...they talk about who's watching what show, and all that, but in reality that isn't the important thing, and isn't the point...the money is in the advertising, and the ratings are used as the way to judge the value of those spots. Remember, ads are how broadcast makes its money...and what you can charge for your advertising is directly linked to the share you have for prior or similar programming. Now, for Hulu, they have clear metrics; you can tell when X account watches Y ad. Netflix doesn't have ads (at least not for me), so that isn't a factor, but both Hulu Plus and Netflix are paid models and they still have consumption metrics. Apple TV isn't real, in this equation; that's like calling out "Samsung DVD players" as a category, since all it does is process content by other avenues like Hulu or iTunes or Netflix. But for all of these alternate avenues, and the fact that the times are, actually, a'changing, broadcast is still a huge business, and the way most Americans consume content. So that's not really what's going on.
What I think IS hurting Nielsen...badly...is the DVR. I know many, many people who practically never watch anything live anymore, and who skip through the commercials with the greatest of ease. These cases break the Nielsen model because for the first time, people are actually watching the broadcast content, but not being subjected to the ads at all. There are some exceptions to this...if we see a new Allstate Mayhem ad, for example, we'll freakin' watch it...because they are entertaining as hell. So, here's the upside of this change...TV ads which are annoying may go the way of the dinosaur, because people are starting to have a choice.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I have a giant TV and an expensive AV setup, but I still watch streaming videos on a tablet. Watching The Daily Show is part of my morning bathroom routine and it's a lot easier to carry my Galaxy Tab from my bedroom to my bathroom to the kitchen than it is to turn on my TV, Amp, Receiver and then wake up the PC that I use to stream internet content.
On the other hand, I really dislike Netflix's streaming videos. I might watch an occasional documentary that way, but I prefer to get nice, rippable discs from the snailmail service so I can at least get the full experience for the movies I do choose to enjoy.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I dont care for ether of them, but my wife and daughter love them both. Nether of them is "Technical" but both of them are capable of and do download the torrents for those shows as well as a show that I think is called "Once upon a time" but I could be wrong on the name.
I however am technical, and I throttle there torrent connections so I can get AMC's Walking Dead faster. :P
No, we don't. Not most of us. Not normal people.
And if I wrote shit like that I'd submit it anonymously too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The bias is not towards technologically minded people (what is this 1998?), it's towards people who use the Internet, i.e., everyone under 30. The Boomers are not likely to download torrents because they grew up with TV sets and, by and large, aren't very tech savvy.
30? 30???? Come on, boomers are over 50 now. Hell I am over 40 and am of the generation that started with home computers. You need to update your timeline, people born after 1970 are very computer savvy (they are not boomers) and many born after 1965 are as well. Once you get beyond that the number begin to sharply drop off.
And I am in my 50's, have had no cable TV for the past few years, and do not miss it at all. I watch TV shows that have either been downloaded, or which come to me online via Netflix. The stuff I download I frequently transfer to my BB Playbook to watch during breaks at work or while I am doing something else on my computer. I have a crappy smartphone that I use mostly to make phone calls. The rest of your points we are the same pretty much. I do have a Twitter account though: I think I have tweeted twice in the past 3 years or so :P
By all that I mean you are not necessarily typical in all regards.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
that's not how we watch any more.
Hulu Check
Netflix Check
Apple TV, Check
Amazon Prime Check
Roku Check
iTunes Check
smartphone Check
tablet Check
Very good. They have managed to list almost all of the ways in which I don't watch TV. In fact, there are only two ways in which I watch TV. One is live on my TV, if it is on a commercial free channel, and the other is time shifted by DVR, if it has commercials, so I can fast forward through them. I don't watch TV on any of the other things that are listed in the article. I know there are some people that do, but as usual, they are announcing demise far too early.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Just before the turn of the century, our household was offered the opportunity to be part of the Nielson ratings.
Owing to remembering all-too-often experience as a youth, when I would start to watch new shows that I really liked, only to see them cancelled before they finished even half a season, let alone established any kind of closure for the events in the show, simply on account of poor ratings, I believed that the chance to be actively involved in measuring the my involvement in the shows that I liked would finally be my opportunity for my voice to be heard. Certainly, since every member in a Nielson home represents a viewership of something on the order of 10,000 or more viewers in other households, I figured that if records were actually being kept about which shows that I watch, and this information was handed to the neworks, then the chance of a show that I liked being cancelled was bound to be that much less.
They hooked up devices to all of our video equipment, to record not only which stations we were watching, but also which programs we were recording. The logging-in procedure was perhaps the most tedious aspect, having to be repeated every couple of hours if the TV was still on to ensure that people were still actually there, but I still found it reassuring that my votes were counting for something. Each member of our household was assigned a unique button on the set-top box which represented that individual's viewership, so that they could track demographics for a show and not just whether or not a program was simply being watched. When our niece came to live with us in 2000, they assigned her a button as well.
Then, in 2003. the first new show I was really interested in since we started being a Nielson household came on the air on what was then called the "UPN network", Jake 2.0. All 6 of us in my family enjoyed the show, and watched it religiously every week. Alas, however, it was cancelled after 16 episodes.
I was quite upset about this. Finally the few TV shows that I actually watched were actually being noted by people who had influence to affect the program, and when a new show comes on that I really like and watch every single week, the show gets cancelled anyway.
I called up our regional contact person later that same week and told her that I wanted the stuff pulled out of our equipment... that we were resigning. She was disappointed to hear it, and attempted to tell me that contrary to my beliefs, my voice was really being heard, but as it apparently didn't make any difference to the outcome, I ended it then and there.
I remember saying to the tech person as they were dismantling the equipment from out TV and VCR, however, that I thought they should probably start expanding their facilities to include Internet usage. He nodded in agreement with me while he worked, saying that it would be a good idea, but that he felt the technology wasn't quite ready to make that practical.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I look at the pirate sites to see what's popular on TV.
Not for long. With the new " 'six strikes' anti-piracy system", presumably these numbers will drop as ISPs start warning/banning users who download copyright content, which includes shows, movies, music, etc.
The files would be corrupt, have severely distorted video and/or audio, or simply be a "Shame on you" advert repeated over and over. Very shortly after this, all the major torrent sites introduced the notion of "verified" torrents, and allowed anyone to rank a torrent, or otherwise flag it as crap. The practice has since stopped for the same reason spam e-mail usually doesn't make it through: A web of trust is a simple, yet powerful way, to sort the chaffe from the wheat.
I don't know if this factored into the practice ending, but I can't think of a more effective way to make someone want to continue pirating and sharing more files. When they were uploading MP3s with static in the middle or just looped in the golden days of Napster, that made me really want to pirate all of that artist's songs and share them with everyone.
Except that is by no means the only evidence they have. You are trying to pretend that the only metrics that exist are the piracy numbers and that such an obvious lie that it's almost not even worth rebutting.
The idea that you can't make any money off of pirates is just something you have decided to take as an article of faith.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I find it rather amazing that anyone considers downloading something to be a terribly technical task. You may need to be somewhat "technical" to be aware of the idea but even that can be explained away by things like Google.
The current technological apparatus is specifically designed to spread information. This includes things like "news" as well as things like "files". N00b friendly interfaces are also very well established so you hardly need to have a CS degree to either be aware of or use torrents.
I suspect that the world has moved on and that it's not like 1998 out there anymore. The "geeks" that are full of themselves here may be shocked at what mundanes are capable of now.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The Republicans found this very thing to be a problem in the last election. They used to be the party of middle aged white males. Now they are the party of senior citizens. Their base remained the same over the course of a couple of decades where that base just got older.
In the meantime, the nature of middle aged white males changed as tech and social values shifted.
Boomers are over 60 now.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And don't socialize with your friends or co-workers who might talk about The Walking Dead or Dexter at lunch
Wow, talk about a LCD anti-social approach. How about you guys talk about the house you're rehabbing on Saturday with Habitat for Humanity? You know, if people spent 1/10th the time swinging hammers for the poor as watching TV, nobody would be homeless.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There are any number of things that HBO could do to better exploit a poorly served market. Piracy is just the tip of the iceberg. It's just the most visible aspect of the interest in their show beyond people who already subscribe to HBO.
Payment avoidance isn't just limited to piracy and HBO could capture more revenue by presenting options to people willing to wait for Netflix, A&E, or broadcast channels.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You need more fiber in your diet, if it takes you 20 minutes to take a shit.
Downton Abbey is just a soap opera. Insert your usual soap opera watching demographics. Rinse and repeat.
The fact that it's being pushed heavily by the likes of Amazon says something about some of our demographic assumptions here.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The basis of the Nielsen system was that a representative group would convey the viewing habits of all customers.
What they're saying is that the Pirate Bay downloads are a good measure of what's popular - among both downloaders and paying customers.
Also, don't forget that there is overlap between the two groups. I download virtually every episode of Game of Thrones from TPB. I also maintain an HBO subscription. The reasoning is simple - I like to watch the show when it broadcasts but I also will rewatch the show a few times later as well. Beyond the first watching I want to watch at my own convenience without putting up with the aggravation that is HBO Go, so I go download the show there as well.
Similarly, I also have AMC and watch the first broadcast of The Walking Dead live, but then always download it so I can watch it a few more times.
To a large degree TPB operates in place of me having a DVR.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Explain Beethoven. Explain red velvet cupcakes. Explain Batman.
If these things were explainable, then the content producers would just crank the formula and produce popular content. We wouldn't need to have a popularity measuring stick like the Nielsen ratings. However, when they try to crank the formula we get shows like "Swamp Pickers" and "Ice Road Idol".
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Nielsen has one and only purpose - to help price ad-time buys.
Of course. Broadcasters aren't in the business of providing entertainment to people. They are in the business of selling people's attention to advertisers.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Explain Beethoven. Explain red velvet cupcakes. Explain Batman.
Those things are good. Their popularity doesn't need an explanation.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That might be why I don't like it. I haven't enjoyed a comedy with a laugh track since Seinfeld.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Exactly. Neilson is NOT about popularity of TV shows. Popularity does NOT have one iota of relevance to TV execs. Ad time buys do.
For example - CBS "wins" Tuesday nights with NCIS and NCIS Los Angeles, which routinely pull in anywhere from 15-20M viewers per episode. Which on Tuesday nights, usually outnumber all the viewers of every other network out there combined.
However, CBS only charges roughly $150K per 30 second spot on these shows - cheap by prime time standards, and many shows with fewer viewers charge a lot more (easily up to $500K).
Why? Despite its popularity, its Neilson rating is only around 2.1-2.5 or so. It's normally the #1 or #2 show, but the prime demographic that advertisers care about (the ones they pay top $$$ for) are NOT served by NCIS/NCIS LA.
Popularity does NOT matter. If a popular show can't pull in the ad money, it will get cancelled. So even if Game of Thrones is the most pirated TV show on TPB, HBO doesn't care because those numbers don't matter. The only numbers that do are ad selling ones and ones that show increases in subscribers. Which explains the fairly delayed releases for download/streaming and media purchase.
And no, product placement does not work in a lot of instances unless your TV show is situated sometime in +/- 5 years or so. Any further and it's either too old or too new to be useful. Which means historical dramas like Game of Thrones, or sci-fi movies in the far future can't benefit.
It's all about ad money. The only really hopeful bit is that a popular show MIGHT be able to be fan supported, but the number of shows that are cancelled means it'll be a very select few with hardcore fans.
I think you misunderstood; everyone under 30 uses the Internet because they grew up with it--obviously there are people over 30 on the Internet (us, for example). Boomers don't download TV shows--though they may use computers--because they didn't grow up with the Internet. And yes, Boomers are old folks now. As a younger member of Gen X (who does not work in IT), I can tell you that the vast majority of my peers are computer illiterate, don't know how to type, and never had a computer at home growing up (nor did I). Even as late as the 90's being "into computers" was still a thing, and a nerdy thing... until internet billionaires became a thing. Nowadays toddlers have smart phones.
In other words, only the segment of the population seeding/leeching torrents that is over 30 is biased towards the tech savvy. The rest are just young, which skews the predictive power of anything that measures downloads or online reviews towards young people, not computer savvy people, as would have been the case in 1998.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
It's becoming increasingly evident that the Nielson demographic is no longer relevant in part because of the age factor. The people who routinely watch TV in real time with commercials, eating off TV trays and leafing through physical copies of TV Guide, are grandparents now, or great-grandparents. And those young people still watching TV (if they're not oldpharts lying about their age) in real time are by definition somewhat disconnected from technology. This has to skew the results in interesting ways.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Along same theme owlnation commented, I was bitching the other day about how terrible TV programming has become. A friend said objective of networks and TV stations is to get your eyeballs glued to the screen, they are not concerned whether you really enjoy the programming or not because you are not the customer. If it's a bad show and you watch it, they've achieved their objective. However, he mentions increasing views of Netflix may disrupt this paradigm. If Kardashians shows were available for fee, i.e. $2 each, they probably would not get much business.
I watch a few channels via cable but my number of channels watched are getting smaller (I've noticed TCM has decreased variety of movies, they repeat frequently) and lots more interesting stuff on youtube: Documentaries from years ago, full length movies though Fast and Sexy with Gina Lollobrigida doesn't include first 15 minutes which she wears a beautiful Connie Francis type dress (so I guess youtube has "its" problems).
mfwright@batnet.com
That might be why I don't like it. I haven't enjoyed a comedy with a laugh track since Seinfeld.
It isn't a laugh track. The show is filmed in front of a live audience (as was Seinfeld). A laugh track is added in post using stock laugh sound tracks. MASH had a laugh track (and was much improved by its removal when the DVDs came out).
The difference is important as laugh tracks are artificial and very annoying. Live audiences (assuming the producers don't cheat) generally convey a genuine atmosphere.
And there is where yield management rears it's nasty head.
HBO could make 100 million selling their service at lower rates and have a much larger audience. But they can make 101 million selling their service at a higher price and have a smaller audience. And really the best point is where they make 111 million in profits but only have 55% the audience.
Which means 45% of their potential customers are going to be working hard to get the content because they can't afford HBO's product. Some go to pirating... some wait for the content to come out on DVD and buy it. Others wait until a friend can loan it to them or they can check it out from the library. And others pirate it.
And HBO has a right to sell their price as dear as they want.
Of course, once those pirating make it really easy to get HBO's content, then some of the 55% starts sliding-- because they really only wanted game of thrones and they can download that so why pay $12 a month.
So now it's not as profitable for HBO to maintain a high price. And a lot of their potential customers have been trained to not pay HBO.
It's a constant struggle between the directors and stars who want 1.1 million this year instead of 1.0 million and hbo which wants $12 a month instead of $9 a month this year. And the cable company that wants $95 instead of $93.
And the customers, many of whom are not getting raises at that rate right now (but I have hope for 2016 to 2020 being a really primo period for working stiffs).
If songs were 10 cents each, and they kept my license so I could redownload them on any box and there was some kind of reasonable licensing fee like $120 a year, then I would never pirate songs.
If the content is cheap enough, people will buy it and not pirate it because the hassle and legal risk are not worth it.
And the content creators have a right to price the content as high as they want it. If they wanted to, they could sell the series to one person for 112 million dollars.
So it's a constant tug of war between the two sides. Performers have a right to be paid. You have no right to their work. But if they price it so high you can't buy it, then they lose no sales if you pirate it. If it is priced reasonably, then you are hurting them when you pirate it instead of buying it.
I have no problem with a person in poverty (be it social security, or in college, or just flat out broke) pirating material they could never buy anyway. However, someone making a good income should be paying for content.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The demographic that gets/views torrents is skewed towards the technologically minded. Contrary to the prevailing slashdot wisdom, this site is not 'the general public'.
However, for reasons that should be apparent, it's a demographic that matters to me.
The problem with pirate sites is monetization. Let's suppose that the number of downloads of Game of Thrones from The Pirate Bay is the most accurate assessment of its popularity. Further, let's posit that 90% of the views come from that. Why does it matter to HBO? How do they recoup the development costs from a TPB viewer? And it matters not whether it is HBO, A&E, or NBC. Someone has to pay actors, writers, directors, etc. Until there is a better method of determining paying customers/viewers, there is still some relevance to traditional ratings. How much and to what degree, we can argue (well, you can. I'm not interested in those minutiae).
The CEOs and Big Wigs at HBO (and every other network) get paid millions of dollars to come up with solutions to this problem. It's easy enough for them to look at TPB or whatever else and see what's popular. But so far, the best these 6 and 7 figure geniuses have come up for monetizing runs the gamut between "just ignore it and maybe it will go away," and "bludgeon everyone who disagrees with our decades old methods."
Here's my quickie consult, free of charge. Two options
(1) Put up the current episodes Free of Charge on HBO.com, with commercials and banner ads and what-not. Also impose a short delay, a week at most, between original airing, and viewing on the website. Require registration on the site (still free, mind you) with a valid email address that you can spam with more revenue-generating ads. Email addresses that are associated with full paid HBO subscriber accounts will be spared from ads. Sure, the geeks will know how to block the banner ads, skip the commercials, and use secondary/tertiary email account to catch all your spam... but those are the same people who torrent now. Even if those people don't generate 1 red cent, bringing them away from torrents is a net gain. Less potential seeders, less torrenting, more people talking about HBO.com and telling all their friends to visit. If you want to lock this down a bit more, restrict viewing to the current episode, and maybe 2 or 3 prior. Regular viewers can keep up, on their own schedule, and HBO will maintain exact number of how many people watch each episode. If people want to catch up from the start, direct them to option #2:
(2) Make a deal with Apple to let iTunes sell complete episodes. (Yes, iTunes is chock full of DRM and requires iDevices, but remember that I'm pitching this to money-grubbing CEOs) Impose the same week-long delay, so that true HBO subscribers have the benefit of seeing everything earlier. Charge $5 per episode, for a complete download, or $1-2 per episode for 12-hour digital rental. Negotiate so that Apple's cut is the same as or less than the current overhead for stamping out physical media, boxing them up, shipping them to retailers, and the retailers cut. Again, you're generating revenue and bringing people away from the torrents. iTunes DRM will limit sharing, and torrenters with a bit of flexible cash might actually prefer iTunes downloads. No chance of a failed download, no accidentally grabbing the German version, no screwed up subtitles. All of the artwork and synopsis info is fully filled out and spelled properly. Every episode is named in the same format...
.
There is no panacea to instantly kill illegal downloading and make everyone sign up for HBO with their television provider. Simply not going to happen. So companies need to learn how to compete in the same space as the downloading, and beat them at their own game. Offer a better service, for a reasonable price, and watch people migrate towards it. Won't happen overnight, but the sooner these big networks start making that transition
This signature is false.
Nielsen does not only meter the people who watch a program when it airs. They haven't done this in over a decade. DVR and Instant view options do not negatively impact Nielsen's tracking. If you live in the middle of nowhere Nielsen still rates anyone who saw the program or saw it within one day of it airing. If you live in a metropolis there a significantly more dynamic cuts of data available including tracking people who see a program within 7 days of it being aired.
More importantly, media buyers don't buy internet ads the same way they buy TV, so to say that TV ratings are less effective is completely untrue. You buy your TV ads separately, and you use the TV ratings metrics from Nielsen to know how effective the television portion of the buy is. You get metrics for other media types from other places.
Yes a company that rates only when a show aired live such as Nielsen did decades ago, would be useless now...but Nielsen is a live and growing company (they just bought Arbitron), they have adapted and are doing fine, all that's happened is that the market for TV spots has gotten smaller because of these other places for buying ads.
Nielsen TV ratings don't track the popularity of a program, they track how many people were watching within a given quarter hour on tv. Which is a very useful metric if you want to buy tv ads.
Oh, but in the grand 'logic' of 'girlintraining', quality content will magically appear on TPB merely because it is popular.
My logic was purely regarding the topic of discussion, which was assessing the actual popularity of a show. I have at no point, anywhere, in any post, entertained the idea of where quality content comes from. If magical space unicorns shit rainbow content out and that's how it appears, well, great. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is ranking of content that is already available in an accurate and unbiased fashion.
Your logic, on the other hand... TROLL.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You can pick what is popular to a specific demographic - technically literate time shifters who may or may not be prepared to pay for content. You probably won't find a lot of "Celebrity Diving" popping up in the torrent feeds.
The Neilsen rating are largely used to assess the value to advertising blocks - which is what drives the price networks are prepared to pay to run a given show in a given timeslot which in turn affects whether the producers think it's worthwhile to continue making the show.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
They may not have sold many $50 Castle posters, but there have been 4 NYT Bestseller novels that have spun off from the series, a couple of graphic novels, etc... So they have certainly expanded the market beyond purely the TV show and the advertising scheduled around it.
BTW the Richard Castle novels have been a pretty good read for a ghost written novel that loosely echoes a TV series. I quite enjoy seeing the parody characters interact like shadow puppets of their 'Real Life' counterparts.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
No chance of a failed download, no accidentally grabbing the German version, no screwed up subtitles.
I spent part of the last week or so exchanging emails with Apple support trying to tell them that quite a few books on the Australian iBooks store were only available in German/Polish/Spanish/Italian and that I suspect it's in error. They keep sending me messages back saying if I want to request new titles I should use the Suggestion form in the iTunes application/website. :(
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
You guys are all over-thinking this. Unless you have a large, dedicated cadre of people gaming the bittorrents, any contribution of this sort is likely to be statistically insignificant.
If only 2 people are downloading a movie, making it look like, say, 12 people are won't really make the movie look much more popular. And if it's already in the thousands, an extra few won't be noticeable. How many of these downloads can a few people fake before they run out of resources, or patience? How many before they significantly skew the statistics? How much money will you have to spend to close that gap, and is it worth the effort?
You're better off using a hacked tracker to provide false information, or using some kind of hacked client that fakes huge numbers of downloads. And I bet somebody will figure out how to detect both of those....
Generally if a system can be gamed, it will be gamed, but at this point in time I don't think it's going to be a problem.
As always, MHO, and probably pulled out of my shorts anyway. :)
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
Am I correct in assuming these books you were looking for are rather obscure? Something tells me iBook will have the Harry Potters, Twilights, etc in just about every language.
Second question: are these books available via pirate sites in the language(s) you want? (and feel free to not answer for self-incrimination reasons, but just something to ponder)
If they're not available through either avenue, which one do you suspect will remedy that problem first? My money is on Apple. Their customer support may be clueless (much like every other customer support) but at least they exist. At least there's someone representing iBooks who might -maybe- be able to remedy your language issue.
This signature is false.
They were all best selling novelists, predominately in the crime genre such as Sara Paretsky, Kathy Reichs, Richard Castle, Charlaine Harris, so not particularly obscure.
They are absolutely available through pirate channels, but I was trying to be supportive of the authors and obtain through legitimate channels first if possible.
The bit I couldn't get through to the support person was the english language versions were not available and Australia is an english speaking country. I think they've confused us with Austria maybe. They just kept giving me the line that if I want something new then put a note in the virtual suggestion box.
I understand that publisher licensing might be an issue but I'd be astonished to hear that someone had bothered to negotiate distribution rights for the German version of the latest Kathy Reichs book to Australia but not the English version.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Plus, remember Game of Thrones is licensed IP. What rights HBO gets to sell, and how much of the money they get to keep if they do, depends on their licensing agreement with George R. R. Martin.
Did Netcraft confirm it was dead?
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Ditto Big Bang Theory.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Having been a Nielsen family years ago, I would say that chance is pretty much nil. It's not like they plop a hipster in your living room who not-so-silently judges everything you do.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.