The Nielsen Family Is Dead 170
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.'"
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nielsen ratings Pirate Bay ratings (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Nielsen ratings Pirate Bay ratings (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Nielsen ratings Pirate Bay ratings (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I was a Nielson family once (Score:4, Interesting)
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.