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How to update the Nielsen system.. (1 Viewer)

DeathStar1

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Is my theory correct that the Neilsons are so useless and out of date with the times that they REALLY need to be updated for the 21st century?

How many neilson people are there at a time now anyway? Isn't the number something like 1,000 people at any given time?
 

MarkHastings

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Neil, I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to say here, but they are developing something new. It will basically be a high frequency tone (that is out of range of hearing) that is encoded into the program.

People participating in the "test" will wear boxes that detect this tone and no work on their part will need to be done to log what they watch. Since every show will have it's own coding attached to this tone, the box will know of everything the person (weraing the device) will have come into contact with, just by picking up the tone. It's almost like a bar code reader that works sonically.

p.s. and they're even thinking of doing more than just TV - they're looking into radio, billboards, etc. Basically any type of ad that they can attach a speaker to and emit this tone.
 

DeathStar1

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Dunno if I like the sound of that.

A much simpler system would be log what people record and watch on their DVR's, since alot more people have them now than there are neilson family's.

Nice to see that they are working on updating it, however..
 

Joseph Bolus

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Just for the record, Nielsen started tracking DVR use in the major markets with the November 2006 "Sweeps" data. They call it "LIVE PLUS" data.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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DVR's are currently logged by Neilsen. There's a big battle right now between advertisers and the networks as to how much those ratings would factor in. The networks want live + 7 days DVR, while the advertisers want only live to count, as it currently is. The likely compromise will be live + 3 days DVR, since something like 90 percent of DVR timeshifting is watched within the first 72 hours.
 

DeathStar1

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So does that mean that whatever I watch on my motorola QIP6416-2 DVR is being sent over to Neilson? Or is it not that widespread yet? Kind of cool if so, and will have to remember to record repeats to help support shows..
 

Kevin Hewell

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The problem with tracking what people watch on a DVR is that it's not representative of the nation as a whole. People in the lower income brackets are not likely to have a DVR and older people probably don't use the technology as much as younger people do.
 

Patrick Sun

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Advertisers wants data of how many "live" eyeballs are viewing their commercials, not whether people time-shift shows (mainly to skip such advertising/commercials). That's the info that networks use to make their case to set the ad rates for their shows (in terms of "live" viewership).
 

DeathStar1

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Well, than can't they just record the 'live' airing ratings instead of the DVR'd ones? It's not like more than 50% of the population cares about commercials now adays anyway. We've been over saturated to death with them :).
 

TravisR

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Why does everyone always seem to assume that the Nielsen ratings are wrong? There's millions of advertiser dollars being spent, they're not spending that money becasue the Nielsens are massively flawed. They're not perfect but they're as close as it's ever going to be.

Ask 100 people on the street if they watch All Of Me (for example) and ask 100 people if they watch Grey's Anatomy. I'd be willing to bet that you'll get alot more yes'es for Grey's Anatomy which is exactly what the Nielsen ratings would tell you too.

Low ratings don't mean the show is bad and conversely, high ratings don't mean that a show is good. A perfect example is Arrested Development. No one watched it but it was one of the best comedies ever on TV.
 

MishaLauenstein

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There's nothing wrong with the number of people that are tracked.

I seem to remember from statistics class that you only need 30 people.
 

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