Are you a Nielson Family? Have you ever met one?

POSTED BY: dyairvatree
UPDATED: Monday, March 29, 2004 23:27
VIEWED: 10333
PAGE 3 of 4

PREV PAGE 1 2 3 4 NEXT PAGE

RKLENSETH

Monday, March 15, 2004 5:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Forrestwolf:
Well, my wife and I participated in a survey when we were newly married - that was...urk...8 years ago. The company (not sure who it was) sent the forms to us, and we agreed. It was paper-only, no Nielson box, and we participated for one period (don't remember how long that was - a week or a month, perhaps?). Totally the honor system.

We probably marked down a fair number of sci-fi shows (what would that have been? DS9? B5?).

I haven't seen such a survey since.

Probably becuase you weren't the kind of family they were looking for.

Oh, and play Cantr II at www.cantr.net.

LISSA

Monday, March 15, 2004 5:39 PM

I think i'm gonna try and take a poll at my school and see how many people have a nielson box or know someone who has one. This system really sucks. If I think for much longer about how Angel could very likely not be cancelled right now with a better ratings system, I'm gonna start crying.

~lissa, spwhore

SAMURAIX47

Monday, March 15, 2004 5:59 PM

We just got TiVo a cpl months ago. I find it very convenient that the TiVo maintains a 14 day schedule of what's coming up for all the channels I get. It does this with a phone line hook-up that uploads with a short daily phone call. It also downloads the viewing stats to their network.

Other than keeping track of the shows that are being recorded by viewers, viewers can also give thumbs-up or thumbs-down (up to 3 ups or downs) ratings to shows that they watch. So of course I have all my faves, like Angel with 3 thumbs-up.

One of the problems with TiVo is that it can't tell what we are watching when the TiVo is recording one show and we are watching something else on the TV that's on at the same time. I'll record Angel and watch ER because in Rhode Island our UPN station is also our supplier of WB programs from 10-11 pm.

Another thing that Tivo can track is shows that the viewer transfers to a VCR or DVD recorder, people that are archiving their favorite shows (which i do with Stargate for a friend).

And like the Janet Jackson booby expose' they can tell how many times someone rewinds a particular part to watch over and over again.

Jaymes

DEBBIEBUK1

Monday, March 15, 2004 6:13 PM

My mum has Sky satellite here in the UK, it has a telephone connection which I had always thought was for downloading data about what people watch. Anyway it's been causing problems so she phoned up to find out what it was for and they said they only collected information for a year.

BTW my whole family watch firefly and buffy and angel, including the 10yr old. Compared to some of the video games his friends get they do not seem inappropriate and all have (from my viewpoint at least) a strong moral message.

CANTTAKESKY

Monday, March 15, 2004 6:56 PM

I participated in a Nielsen "TV diary" survey, and have known others who have. I have never met anyone who had a Nielsen TV Meter in their home.

The Nielsen website explains:

Quote:

Why haven’t I ever met a "Nielsen family"?

Actually, you may have. There are hundreds of thousands of "Nielsen families", including diary and metered households. We ask our households not to reveal they are in the Nielsen Media Research panel. This protects their privacy and helps ensure the integrity of the panel. In the few cases where homes have revealed their NielsenTV status, we removed them from the metered panels or disregarded their diaries.

How many "Nielsen families" are there?

There are 5,000 households in the national People Meter sample, approximately 20,000 households in the local metered market samples, approximately 1,000 metered homes for our national and local Hispanic measurement, and nearly 1.6 million diaries are edited each year.

From http://www.nielsenmedia.com/index.html

Can't Take My Gorram Sky

ZELDA

Monday, March 15, 2004 7:00 PM

I knew someone who had a Nielsen box. Technically, Nielsen families are apparently sworn to maintain some pretense of secrecy, so that their overzealous friends (like us) don't come over and hijack thier TV sets.

The person I knew was a female co-worker, young twenties, who lived with several roommates. It was similar to the scenario outlined above - Nielsen called them, asked them about their demographic info, and then asked them if they'd be interested in getting a Nielsen box.

Apparently the setup is a little bit of a pain. Before you watch anything you have to log in the demographic data of everyone in the room. It wasn't such a big deal for them, because they hardly ever watched TV. I was always trying to get her to watch Sports Night when it was on the bubble, but they were all out at sports practice or something.

Also, didn't I read somewhere that Nielsen has started incorporating some form of TiVo data into their ratings?

OKKAY

Monday, March 15, 2004 10:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zelda:
I knew someone who had a Nielsen box. Technically, Nielsen families are apparently sworn to maintain some pretense of secrecy, so that their overzealous friends (like us) don't come over and hijack thier TV sets.

The person I knew was a female co-worker, young twenties, who lived with several roommates. It was similar to the scenario outlined above - Nielsen called them, asked them about their demographic info, and then asked them if they'd be interested in getting a Nielsen box.

Apparently the setup is a little bit of a pain. Before you watch anything you have to log in the demographic data of everyone in the room. It wasn't such a big deal for them, because they hardly ever watched TV. I was always trying to get her to watch Sports Night when it was on the bubble, but they were all out at sports practice or something.

Also, didn't I read somewhere that Nielsen has started incorporating some form of TiVo data into their ratings?

Yes, but I don't think it will help. The article I found (on Google) is here:

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,55091,00.html

To summarize, they're not using Tivo's official ratings, they're doing their own Tivo ratings based on a small subset of viewers, half of whom are already Neilsen households. Guess how many they're basing the ratings off of?

20.

Twenty Tivos across then entire US will determine Neilsen Tivo ratings, 10 of which are existing Neilsen families, who as we know don't watch the shows we like.

Seems to me like they're just trying to justify their own ratings by making their Tivo "ratings" as much like their own as possible.

Neilsens!

LISSA

Monday, March 15, 2004 10:47 PM

it's like a cult...creepy...

~lissa, spwhore

RKLENSETH

Monday, March 15, 2004 11:19 PM

...so the TV industry manufactures its own ratings. Think about it. Reality shows are cheap and easy to make so they find the demographic of people who like reality shows, given them a box. Now the advertisers determine where to advertise their product where they think their product will have the biggest impact so seeing that reality shows are doing well they are going to advertise in those time slots. Perfect. TV industry makes billions of dollars with barely spending a pretty penny. Because the ratings look so great it will drag in other viewers because they want to watch the cool thing. So entertainment is dictated by a few wealthy bastards in the tv industry.

Oh, and play Cantr II at www.cantr.net.

RKLENSETH

Monday, March 15, 2004 11:23 PM

...so the if you are not in the TV industries' demographic of what will make them the buck real fast then you are not given the box. They manufacture ratings to make money. Pretty simple. Shows like Firefly re expensive but the TV industry will simply not give the box to people who would fall into the demographic of watching Firefly. So the TV industry can come up with the excuse that the show failed and that makes everyone happy. But the thing is, this time the worm has turned against the TV industry. We have proven as Browncoats that the Nielsen Box does not work and the true workings of the TV industry. So now when you support Firefly and Serenity make sure that you say down with the Nielsen as they are one of the reasons why Firefly was taken off the air.

Oh, and play Cantr II at www.cantr.net.

PREV PAGE 1 2 3 4 NEXT PAGE