TVSquad

Wait a minute......12,000 homes and 35,000 people decide whether a show lives or dies. Now that is seriously screwed up!!! I always knew they used the Nielsen system, but I thought it was millions of people? Where do the millions come in? This whole system is just messed up.

My solution to the problem. Create a simple program that lists the shows and airtimes (it would update through the internet). It also has a field for what media they used to view the show (Direct from TV, iTunes, Amazon, DVR, BitTorrent :), etc). The user sets up an account to submit their "viewing" to the research company. The user account will have the demographics. This way you get a TRUTHFUL representation of who and when they viewed what shows. It is really not that hard people......

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The problem with that system is that broadcast companies could feasibly tamper with the numbers to make a show a hit that isn't really a hit. And so their ad revenue goes up for a show that no one's watching. Which will essentially degrade TV shows, since they can find the cheapest show to make, with crappy quality and make it a hit. Far-fetched, but I trust broadcasters about as much as I do Lucifer.

As for how they get millions; they extrapolate the data from the Nielsen families.

Disregarding the other venues people use to watch television (iTunes, websites, etc.), I would be perfectly willing to let the cable companies submit my viewing information for demographic purposes. If it means good shows don't get canceled, I'd be all for that.

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Assbackwards, that pretty much sums up the entire Nielsen system. 12k Homes??? Thats it, what a joke. And why do they also list it as 35k people within those 12k homes. Do they count the 2 adults and 1 child as watching each show thats on in that household?? You telling me both parents and the child are watching Dora along with CSI.. I don't think so.

The university I graduated from had 30k students. Our school alone could have saved shows like Firefly and Traveler not to mention countless others.

We live in the digital age, you want EXACT viewership count? Ask the cable/satalite companies for the numbers. If you want to be lazy you could just ask Comcast they have more than 24 million cable TV subscribers.

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As far as I can tell, the only reason the studios care about ratings in the first place is for advertising purposes. A show's popularity is only important so far as it convinces advertisers to keep buying airtime. Most downloaded shows don't include the ads, so those views are worthless to the broadcasters, who are trying to give advertisers reasons to buy their ad-time. In other words, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Neilsen to include alternative viewing options in their ratings.

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First of all, advertisers spending millions of dollars aren't stupid. They know that if NBC reports that 14 million people watched Heroes "last week" and NBC uses that to base their ad rates, then the advertisers are going to demand that their future commercials actually play to that number of people. If the show ends up with a significantly lower rating (perhaps because the network only broadcast it once the next week), the ad buyers receive a "make-good" in the form of credit to use against the purchase of future ads.

Second, 35,000 is a huge number of people to monitor and is statistically significant for the metrics the networks currently use to measure their audience. Neilsen does not just pick 35,000 random people and say "These people represent the entire viewing audience." Those people are all demographiclaly screened to ensure that they represent a cross-section of all American demographics. Now in order for them to get more finely detailed, so that, for instance, NBC can claim that Journeyman was the show most watched by left-handed Linux users between the ages of 18 and 54, they need to expand the sample set. They are constantly trying to improve the system, as I recall they recently added monitors in some college dormitories because that audience was under-represented in the ratings.

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35000 people is a statisticly valid sample. More is obviously better.

Most of those presidential polls you read about are only a few thousand people at best.

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Currently there are approx 70 MILLION cable tv subscribres in the US. 35,000 is pittance to 70 million. 35k is 0.00005% of 70 mil, that is no where near statistically accurate no matter how well you think you are extrapolating the data. The number is just too small especially when the information is already available.

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That system is so screwed up it hurts. When you add up the numbers in total for an entire night, it doesn't even come close to the number of people who are actually watching TV. That is why Neilson's is a total joke!

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Oh my god... Martin you went to university and actually think what you just wrote?

I can't believe you know so little about polling, surveys et al.

Here in germany, with 80 million residents, every poll that samples 1000 people is considered valid. Taken over to the US that would mean you'd only have to sample 4000 people to get the same, valid results.

Considering the Nielsen ratings sampling a too small number of households and residents is just idiotic. You should be ashamed to have attended university and exclaim such complete and utter BS. Seriously.

You should criticize Nielsen for trying to find out how many people watched a show via the way they are doing it at the moment. Their technology is flawed because people are watching shows in different ways theses days. THATS the problem and Brad explained it pretty good IMHO.

Tripling the amount of people is a way for Nielsen to be able to split up their results in tinier demographics more easily. They need a base of ~4000 people (like I explained) for each tinier demo to get valid results. This way they can still sell valid information for a couple of demos who still stick to their old viewing habits of just watching TV via sitting in front of it and using the remote - not using a PC, not iTunes, not timeshifting, not placeshifting et cetera.

But I have to object to the idea that you should stop gathering this data to find out who's watching what. I also don't think that adding up the amount of people who watched an episode within a week is wrong.

How many people are actually re-viewing an episode? I guess the number i close to zero.

Nielsen should much rather add additional ways of gathing information to their portfolio. Supplying the households they are monitoring with their own PVR also gathering data. Making additional software available that monitors the families' computers and finds out what they watch on iTunes... monitor their TiVo.

I pretty much doubt that in this day and age, TV networks only rely on data gathered by nielsen. They will also look at their sales they had via iTunes and other platforms, check how many results they get on YouTube of clips that have been put there, check MySpace for the amount of fanpages, put up their own online-video-platform where you can get episodes for free (which they all already did).

You can simply not think that Nielsen ratings alone decide the fate of a TV show. Data is always only a tool that needs to be interpreted. What was that saying again? Don't trust data you haven't falsified yourself. In the end, the figureheads in the network-offices will decide what get's renewed and what doesn't.

So don't bash Nielsen. At least they are trying to improve the data they gather. Of course they aren't that important anymore but I really don't think that the people running the networks still think that Nielsen is that important. And if they did then it doesn't matter because obviously those CEOs and network executives are morons that would make idiotic decisions even if the data they based their decisions on was more valid.

Look at Ken Levine and what he said about test screenings (sorry I can't find his blog posting about it at the moment, have to google a bit more). There are network execs out there who base their decisions on stuff like that, where people wandering the streets who get a soda and some sandwiches are interviewed. Or even better: they decide based on their gut feelings about a show and whether THEY like it or not.

So you could get 30k students together every week and have all of you filmed watching Greys Anatomy. That wouldn't change the fate of the show either because that wouldn't make all 30k of you soccer moms. Or retired army veterans. Or grandpa and grandma.

Seriously. That 30k university comparison made you look pretty dumb.

Let me rephrase that. It made you look astonishingly dumb

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They actually address the concern expressed in their surveys they do online with a survey firm.

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do away with the current system. it's not accurate enough.

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My biggest question with the ratings is what's the margin of error. I trust this is more known in the industry, but I have to admit that 12,000 households does sound awfully small when considering the amount of options viewers now have with ever expanding cable line-ups.

Another concern is that the results are self-reported, aren't they? That offers a lot of room for error or underreporting. Polling isn't an exact science. Its a useful toll, but it never tells the whole story. However, being the only hard data available in TV, I think it gets overvalued. I'm not sure how to change that, though, so better polling seems like the best option for the time being.

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my roommate and I do those surveys so we'd already giving "how i met your mother" and "30 rock" tons of good feelings, before "the reaper"--and after "the class." :(

ps. we dont have any cable and watch some shows online, and the survey notes this.

television karma's the best!

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35k is insufficient because of the complexity of the viewer population and the many viewing options.

For example: a 35yo white single male living in detroit is not watching the same thing as his neighbor (a 35yo black single male) or that guys neighbor (a 35yo white married male) or his neighbor (35yo black single male earing 65k/yr) and on and on. Thats with 3 controlled variables (age/sex/loc).

You can extrapolate data on less complex systems, such as black bear population diet. Because all the bears act similarly to similar environmental constraints or all bears living in detroit only have a few dietary options so you can watch 3 and determine what the entire population eats.

On a side note Bash, you are a good example of how anonymity on the internet threatens the original beauty of the system.

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Even their proposed improvements aren't statistically significant. They need to really consider DVRs, TiVOs, viewings on the web sites of the stations, and iTunes. Either that or just do away with it altogether and design a new system. This explains why the average lifespan of a new show on Fox is three episodes.

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Over at the futoncritic.com they have some very well put-together columns on how Neilsen works. It's still on the front page, go read #8 "box or not you are represented in the neilsen ratings."

Reading some of these responses, it seems many of you that dislike the system think that Neilsen just gives out 12K "random" boxes - not so, they can't be relied on for such data without actually knowing what they are doing. They DO take into account MULTIPLE factors when giving these boxes out. In regards to the Detroit comment, sure, they give a box to the 35yo white man in Detroit, but in a similar community as Detroit (money/poverty/education/probably a lot more factors) they will give the box to that neighbor 35yo black man, and another similar community to the 35yo married white man and so on and so forth.

To claim that the system needs to be thrown out does not look to solve anything. TV is a business and they require hard numbers to make the money from their advertisers. DVR's are taken into account when they do some of their numbers, but they must be watched by 3AM the following day to be counted.

I also think it's safe to say most people don't understand how the viewing works for a Neilsen household. These houses CANNOT own a DVR (which is only a small percentage that do anyways) but instead have a fancy remote. When the member sits down they click a button. It's not data that can be faked, unless they want to go through tons of hoops to creatively make a machine that can click the buttons while the family/individual is away. Thus, if you and your kids are out at a soccer game and can't get back for the seven o'clock show on time, you aren't counted. But once you turn it on at 730, that's where you see the turn of the half-hour changes, who jumps in and who jumps off. Again, this is all done via remote. I'd say that that's pretty accurate assuming that the data pool they're gathering from is accurate.

If I had to fill out a form instead, what's to keep me from lying on it? Say that I really want a show to stay on air that might be so-so in ratings - I just check the box that I watched it even if I had missed it. The data's not controlled.

In regards to adding together showings in a week, I think they need to look at the reasons people are either watching for the first time or rewatching. I am interested in watching the CW's GOSSIP GIRL, but unfortunately it conflicts with my two other TIVO's and so I don't get it on first run. No problem, it's set to NOT be in first night record because they're going to show it again! Same thing with FX shows, they get repeated so I always can catch the repeat due to conflicts. If they can separate out the repeat watches on the later showings and count the "new" viewers I think then that is a good thing Neilsen is doing. Heck, it may even bring about a change in what programming we see on Saturday nights, if it gives the network a chance to make extra money KNOWING that this will happen.

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Martin trust me, I'm as "unfriendly" and "direct" in person. I might not say "you are an idiot" but don't you think that when I say a sentence like "So you went to university and you actually think that..." is just the same?

It might be more subtle, but I am still that direct and in-your-face.

So please don't use that "the anonymity on the internet made you say that". Trust me. I'm the same offline and people hate me for telling them what I think plenty. I'm simply not one of those guys who think something and don't say it to get by easier, without friction.

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Penguin the problem I have is the remote. To get real accurate data, people's sight should be tracked and everything that's put on TV should have watermarks that can be found when the "video" from recording the viewers vision is checked for what he/she saw.

Anyway, I think what Nielsen does is still the best approach to things. You can't just simply stop doing it. Even if you get an awfal representation of what's actually going on the networks need data to work with and in the end people (!) decide what to order. It's not simply a rational decision where you look at two numbers and the higher one wins.

I mean honestly - if this system upsets people so much you should take a look at the electoral college system. Now that is a ridiculous way to vote and count people's opinions. And don't get me startet on Florida 2000 and the punchcards.

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Spell check your headline

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LOL Bash, while I agree that the remote still has issues, and your idea is the best, the practicality of actually putting it into practice I have a feeling would be too much money that Neilsen isn't willing to put out. The only thing I could think of to try to make it more "true" would be to quiz them after? But that opens up an entire other can of worms. Not enough room here. =) And until another company can come in with a better way to do what Neilsen does, Neilsen IS the best way and I think they're taking the proper steps to continue to grow and try to reflect America's changing viewing habits.

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