Why I hate the Nielsen Rating System
The Nielsen Rating System is used to determine how many viewers are watching a particular show. This data in turn directly decides how much networks can charge for advertising, which then determines if the show is worth producing, i.e. is it making us money? The system is antiquated and broken.
The Nielsen System is supposed to accurately represent a cross-section of the American viewing public. To find out who is watching TV and what they are watching, the company gets around 5,000 households to agree to be a part of the representative sample for the national ratings estimates. Nielsen’s statistics show that 99 million households have TVs in the United States. The key, therefore, is to be sure the sample is representative. Then TVs, homes, programs, and people are measured in a variety of ways. How can you determine anything with such a small sample size? And who are in these 5000 households I don’t know anyone who has ever been a Nielsen family. The Nielsen Ratings has in no way represented my viewing habits at all. Come on is reality TV really better than Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, Chuck, Fringe, or Heroes all are rumored to be on the bubble for renewal due to low ratings.
You know how those boxes work? You have to manually program in the age and sex of everyone in the room at-the-time-they-are-there. Can you imagine the inaccuracy during holidays? Or parties? How about when a family of five has a box, and it’s bedtime for the youngsters but the parents are too lazy to change the box? Suddenly you have three kids under the age of eight logged in as watching Southland or Law and Order SVU
The Nielsen Ratings System is antiquated and no longer works, if it ever did. Nielsen would argue that it’s the best thing going but I say that’s because it’s the only thing going. Nielsen’s system is the number one reason I believe that we have so much crap on TV. I don’t know what the answer is but there must be some way to collect better data perhaps with cooperation from satellite and cable providers. And what about DVR’s they have only recently started to take this technology in account almost ten years after becoming widely available to the public. Come on guy’s get with the times more people are watching shows via alternate methods DVR, Itune, Hulu, and many many more. Well enough of my soap box for now. Till the next time I emerge from the murky depths of the interwebs happy surfing.
Sharkey
Posted on April 22, 2009, in Geek Stuff. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
Digishark The Tech/Geek Blog 
I agree with what you said, there are now more ways that people can watch their shows like DVR, itunes, hulu. Its stupid that they are still using this rating system.
Mr. Man and I were a Nielson Family before they had the boxes. Did ours by hand. And I remember wondering how effective this could possibly be.
And we do have a lot of crap on TV these days.
This system is bias! This does not figure in other countries, DVD sales, online watching. With technology of today it would be so easy to have people come in and vote online or something, anything. I know so many people who do not watch most reality shows yet they have demographics of 4 mil or more! Then all superhero shows always get canceled as do sci-fi shows. If superhero shows are not ever watched then why do movies like Xmen, Spiderman, Thor, etc keep being made if nobody likes them? As far as sci fi if nobody likes sci-fi then why did AVATAR become the best selling movie?
If they insist on keeping this stupid system then switch the boxes around every 6 months…or something.