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

POSTED BY: dyairvatree
UPDATED: Monday, March 29, 2004 23:27
VIEWED: 10333
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DRU

Tuesday, March 16, 2004 12:29 AM

Hi,

Several years ago, I was a Nielsen viewer. I believed they sent a mass mailing targeting the area they were interested in and we responded.

Nielsen hooked up all our VCR's and TV's to their box. If memory serves me correct we got a check up front for signing with them and a small check either once or twice a year to cover telephone charges. Early in the morning, they would dial in to get the results. We were with them for a long time, but it got to be a pain. I had wanted to take either my vcr or TV for servicing because Nielsen opened up the my warranty was voided. They paid for part of it.

Anyways, we decided we didn't we didn't want to be a Nielsen viewer. They really tried to talked us out of it, because they were targeting hispanic viewers in the Chicago area. Every time one my favorite shows like Firefly or Angel gets cancelled, I feel pain of regret.

Dru

ECMORGAN69

Tuesday, March 16, 2004 3:27 AM

I don't have a Nielsen box. If I had one, I would put on porno, SciFi, and Fox News Channel all day and night I wonder what all the porn would do to the numbers...

They can have my "Firefly" DVDs when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers....

Oh yeah, you, FOX TV!!

WYNDHAM

Tuesday, March 16, 2004 5:16 AM

We did the "TV Diary" from Nielson. It was for one week and they gave us $5. Just recently, a pop-up from Nielson came on my computer asking if I would let them track my web browsing. I said no at the time, not wanting to add to the spyware that seems to get in there every week, but now I guess i should have, especially with looking at the Firfly forums everyday.
I don't see how the Neilsons can accurately reflect what the population is really watching. And, as far as on;y wanting to target families, aren't the people, married or not, without children the ones with more disposable income. You'd think that the sponsers would want to target where the money is.

SEVENPERCENT

Tuesday, March 16, 2004 5:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:

The Nielsen website explains:
Quote:

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

This is interesting in and of itself- For a country with more than Three Hundred Million people in it, those seem like mighty small numbers - How big exactly is a 'local metered market?', and how many people are the same Nielsen viewers year after year (the ones- like someone else who posted- the Nielsons say 'fit the demographic') -

------------------------------------------
He looked bigger when I couldn't see him.

THRAWN

Tuesday, March 16, 2004 6:43 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by lissa:
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

Truly, Angel getting cancelled had NOTHING to do with ratings. The ratings this season have been higher than ever, by a lot. That's not why it happened.

Nielsons may have been part of the cause of Firefly's demise (personally I'm not convinced), but it certainly had nothing to do with Angel. Contracts and such for WB shows expire after 5 years, and they rarely renew a show afterwards - if they do, it has to be of exceptional popularity. Angel was only ever a relatively small, vaguely cult following, and that wouldn't have changed. There are so many other factors than this one set of ratings that it seems to me a bit petty to blame this for cancellations.

ZELDA

Monday, March 29, 2004 8:40 PM

Bumping the thread here, I guess, but I've been out of town for a week and this article came up in the meantime called "Confessions of a Nielsen Family" and I thought you guys might be interested:

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/175837p-152704c.html

IDAVE

Monday, March 29, 2004 11:27 PM

Whenever this topic comes up, I think about a short-lived Paula Poundstone series several years ago where she wanted to interview a Neilson family. Of course, Neilson wouldn’t allow that, so they asked to interview someone who knew a Neilson family. That got nixed also. So she ended up interviewing a family that lived a few doors down from Leslie Neilson. “It’s dark, but you can kind of see the edge of his roof over there…”

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