Slashdot Mirror
Less Television in Online Homes
Shaheen writes "USA Today has an interesting report about how homes that have an Internet connection watch an average of %13 (about an hour) less television than other homes each day. You can read about it here. "
What about those of us who forget to turn the TV off while
we read our email? The scariest thing to me is that 13% is
an hour. Who is watching 10 hours of TV a day?
You've just hit the nail squarely on the head. The Nielsen Group doesn't want a representative sample of all TV viewers - only the ones that advertisers can sell stuff to. People who watch TV for content aren't part of that group.
More to the point - the purpose of the Neilsen ratings isn't to tell TV producers what they need to get the eyeballs of the die-hard fans who watch one or two programs religiously - it's to tell advertisers where their dollars will be best-spent. Better to ignore the Babylon 5 fanatic who makes $80K/year and ignores the advertising in order to get the family of four making $30K and spending all their disposable income on the crap that Bratleigh and Snotley see during the commercials (er, the 30-second ones between the 30-minute ones!) every Saturday morning.
The TV viewer who changes channels when the commercials come on, or who only watches a few hours a week, is like the web surfer who turns off images and/or blocks banner ads. He or she who ignores the marketing is, perforce, not worth marketing to. By contrast, the people who sit, slack-jawed, through every commercial displayed, and who spend several hours a day doing it, regardless of whether the programming is worth watching or not, are a very sought-after market.
What this has done to the quality of programming is left as an exercise to the reader. Which, of course, is why many of us have abandoned television for the 'net.
Speaking of which - I loved being able to read a few articles about the 30th anniversary of the moon landing without having to sit through six hours of unending coverage about an inexperienced pilot who Darwinned himself out of the gene pool by being too stupid to trust his instruments instead of his vertigo-addled inner ears.
But back to your Nielsen experience - it's clear that TV advertisers are just as happy to not have to put up with people like us as we are not to have to put up with people like them. They go where the money is, we go where the content is. 10 years ago, I'd have been worried about this - after all, where do you go for content once all media have been dumbed-down for the slack-jaw set? Thankfully, the answer is right in front of us - we just make and distribute our own damn content, and to hell with anyone who tries to get in our way.