TVSquad

I wonder what the ratings would be like if you included the people who download the torrents each week. Whenever I check for LOST torrents there are always more than 10 thousand people seeding it, and that is not a stagnant pool of seeders. It must bump the numbers by a few million at least, especially since international viewers rely upon Bittorrent almost exclusively.

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I honestly don't believe the Nelson ratings anymore. I really don' think they are accurate and I wish TV would stop using them for their numbers. When it says a show is only getting 5 million viewers in all the US. There are what 350 Million people in the us, when you add up all the top shows in a night I don't believe it even adds up to 80 Million in total - what is the rest of this 200 Million people doing? Nelson isn't accurate and good shows are going by the wayside because of inaccurate numbers!

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Could you explain how this works? I always thought the overnight ratings were the result of data culled from the larger cities, while the full ratings posted later in the week resulted from info gathered from all Nielsen sources throughout the country. This is the first time I've seen something about "time-shifted" programming info being added in. Does this mean Nielsen families report WHEN they watched a show they TIVO'd or recorded earlier? Because that's what this posting is making it sound like.

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Greg,

Yes, live plus seven day ratings are a recent addition to Nielsen's data. They account for viewers who watched a show within 7 days of its initial airing. For the most part, this means viewers with personal video recorders.

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I've said before that I don't watch any shows "live". Everything is time-shifted in my home and while we're not a Nielsen family, I would bet there's plenty of households who time-shift most, if not all, of their television.

With work, kids, extracurricular activities for both kids and adults, it's just not possible to regularly sit down and watch television when the networks decide to feed shows to us. If we couldn't time-shift, we just wouldn't be able to watch television.

I also think the Nielsen ratings are terribly inaccurate, but for now it's what the industry relies on. That's too bad.

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By the way...

Brad, why isn't your comment highlighted in the orangeish color? You *are* the article author. Just curious.

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Maybe if they didn't move it back an hour, I would watch it live like I used to do. Since it is now on at 10pm (west coast), it's too late and it competes with South Park. Good thing I have a dual tuner PVR so I can record both!

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I too timeshift all of my programs. Most of my favorites are serialized such as Lost, Heroes and 24. Commercial breaks have become a nightmare, so zipping through them is the only way I can enjoy the program. Even if I am home at the time the show is on, I will watch it a half hour into it so I can FF.

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I would have fast forwarded not only the commercials but half the show to get to the flashbacks and the twist at the end that I think I kind of new was coming. I just didn't feel like it was surprising.
I'm starting to feel like this is gilligan's island syndrome, nothing really happens or else the problem is solved and the show dies.

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YES i am a downloader, i live in southeast asia, we download all shows here.

also the mafia downloads the shows and sells it on DVD so all the other tech-unsavvy people can watch these shows and they dont need to know what a peer or seeder is.

you know its downloaded cause the ABC or NBC logos are still on the screen, whereas original-dvd releases dont have these
logos.

also they come out with new dvds every 3 - 4 eps, so those ppl are max only 1 - 2 months behind u guys in the states.

guess how much per dvd? US$0.05 HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

but no, this is not good, because these shows rely on advertising and dvd sales to survive, and if people download, tivo or buy pirated dvds, the shows will suffer nd get canceled. so then we are the ultimate losers.

BUT!!! these money hungry studios overcharge for dvds, etc.. and also they have NO AVENUE for distribution to these parts. they sell the rights at crazy prices, so most tv stations cannot afford until 1 - 2 years after the show has aired in teh states. who wants to wait that long??

they should sell cheaper, so ppl wont be buying these dvds or downloads!
even if they make half, its still better than ZERO!! morons!

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I would guess that more than half of time shifters skip commercials. Why would you watch them when you could fast forward?

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If I'm not paying full 100% attention to the show, I often won't realize that I've sat through an entire set of commercials. But yes, of course generally, I'll skip through commercials like most people would.

I personally wouldn't be opposed to dropping most commercials altogether and going with a "ticker" at the bottom of the screen with some advertising. You can't do away with ads completely, so at least this way shows that are PVR'd or even downloaded would still benefit the companies advertising, the stations/production companies, and thus the shows themselves.

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Darren please be from outside of the US because I as a german know how many people there are in the US. I saw it on TDS last year when the census people showed their spiffy 300-million-clock (they also mentioned that the day they chose was kind of random because if you cound in illegal immigrants then the number could've been reached way before that date). I guess the US is now at roundabout 302 to 305 million citizens.

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You know Stigmata, CCTV in China showed the German soccer league back in 2005 on the internet - in the end people from here got on the net and watched the game there instead of buying decoder-cards for pay-tv.

The problem is - people will ALWAYS chose the cheapest distribution channel. If a worker in china works 7 days a week for 5 cents an hour, he can only afford a TV show at a comparable price to what it is in the US. Minimum wage is 7.50 US$ at the moment (I think, read it yesterday about workers at Disneyland in Anaheim) - an episode on iTunes costs 2 bucks, meaning an episode in chine should cost 1,25 Cents.

Now don't tell me that there would be people from china setting up websites, they themselves owning a credit card registered in china and then re-selling usernames/accounts for a future chinese iTunes to people in the rest of the world because of the enormous margin of 1.98 US$.

There are dozens of people selling Battlefield 2142 copies (legal ones!) from Taiwan here in germany because the price there is just as "high" as it is her compared to the local income and the margin is so huge that international shipping still leaves you with an enormous profit.

ANYTHING is more expensive than a torrent. I myself would be any and every episode of every TV show would it be priced at 10 cents an episode, trust me - a whole season would only be 2.20 US$. But that could still be considered "too much" for the reast of the world - or to people who don't have a job. Anything more than ZERO is too much for many people. There is still a "valid" reason to steal things. And this is nothing else than that - stealing intellectual property. But I have to admit I myself also argue about the price of downloadable episodes because iTunes still prices whole records at the same price as hardcopy versions in my local recordstore - or look at the price of the whole season of 24 - with no guarantee for future availability they charge you more than the complete DVD-set will cost (complete with extras). That's simply a total joke. They finally offer "apple.tv" but that thing with it's 30GB harddrive AGAIN is a total joke. It has less HDD capacity than an iPod video. That's laughable. I never thought they actually still produce HDDs that small.

Anyway, just my 2 cents about that "too expensive" quote and downloadable episodes :-)

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I have a question about which group I fall into here. Weds nights are pretty full when it comes to TV viewing and everything seems to get bumped a little bit so I can get it all in. By the time I get to LOST, it is usually about 10 or 15 minutes into the hour so I start watching it on my DVR. By the time the show is over, I've caught up and I'm basically watching it live.

Does that put me in the live group or the timeshifted group? I watch the whole episode during the broadcast hour however I have also timeshifted through all the breaks. I've wondered this for a while now. Any comments on this one???

http://www.myspace.com/scoobarama

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Nielsens aren't really about overall ratings. They're about ad sponsored ratings. They work well for that purpose, since ads pay the bills. It's you people that give Nielsen more weight than their worth.

I'm sure when ABC moved Lost to 10, they knew they'd be losing some viewers during that time slot. I'm suprised I stay up.

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I have a question unrelated to the article, and it's been brought up before, but I don't remember there ever being an explanation.

I made 2 comments above, one right after the other, but my second comment, currently listed at #5 shows the proper time and date while my first comment (#7 at the moment) is listed as being made this morning. Anyone know why this happens? My #5 should be time-stamped only a minute or two after my #7.

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I've given TiVo the OK to give my viewing data to Nielson and Nielson the OK to use my data.

In my opinion this is going to save TiVo. They can produce better minute-by-minute data from a much larger group than Nielson can produce from set-top ratings boxes without the cost associated with the boxes.

Also, you are getting data from people that spend money on things like TiVo. WHich ought to give advertisers a stiffy.

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I sometime just wait till 20 min into the show, and I skip the commercials and still watch it nearly live. I have noticed though, when you have a pvr, you don't watch some shows you used to. Simply because you know they are there and can be watched any time. Ect anytime never comes. CSI Miami is one of these shows for me.

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