Nielsen Struggles To Track Modern Viewing Habits 248
RobotRunAmok writes "The Nielsen Company has been the principal entity tracking TV shows' popularity, and, by extension, their potential profitability. But as our media consumption practices change, some believe that Nielsen's methods have not kept pace. A new consortium including networks owned by NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Discovery, and Walt Disney — along with major advertisers — is calling for the creation of a new audience measurement service, and planning to solicit bids from outside firms by the fourth quarter of this year. Nielsen says they're not worried about so many of their customers ganging up on them, having just invested more than a billion dollars in research to stay modern. Except that today Nielsen announced they would pointedly not be adding weights to DVR households, and that adding weights for the presence of a personal computer or Internet access in under-represented households would provide 'no significant change or enhancement' to its national TV ratings sample. The pundits deride Nielsen's 'archaic' methodology and 'disco-era tactics,' but others scoff that such a consortium will only 'put the foxes in charge of the henhouse.' Stay tuned..."
Re:Bittorrent (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I know the system is broken.... (Score:3, Interesting)
This comes as no surprise. (Score:3, Interesting)
As a consequence, Nielsen will do whatever it can to stonewall, obfuscate, and generally hide the obvious: the day of Network hegemony is coming to a close.
This doesn't mean the Networks are going to disappear. What it does mean is that the Network business model of delivering motion picture, and the techniques, methods, aesthetics, and processes developed to support that system, is no longer the complete hegemonic force it used to be. In 1948 there was radio and TV and movies and... ummmm... not much else. Today there is broadcast TV, Cable TV, online video, radio, satellite radio, computer games, game consoles, Web2.0 social networks and similar systems (viz 2nd life), podcasts, etc. etc. etc.
The last actual advertisement I paid attention to AT ALL was last week (well, actually this morning - the girl on the billboard was f*cking hott. don't know what she was selling, but damn she was cute...) when I actually clicked on an advert to find out more about a certain brand of eReader (no, not the kindle...) So, that particular advert was successful, and it was online. Not on TV.
That's the mindshare competition TV is dealing with, and what Nielsen refuses to deal with. TV could actually GROW in size, and still be increasingly marginalised by the explosion of all the other media.
RS
Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie? (Score:4, Interesting)
If your viewing habits include skipping all (or timeshifting beyond a couple days) the commercials that pay for the show I don't see why they should give DVR viewers much weight.
It's the eyeballs on commercials that count, not how many people like the show (but not enough to watch it realtime or to watch the commercials). If you like the show but don't want to watch it when it is broadcast watch it off the company's site. Then at least you'll get counted in a way that matters.
Re:Personally I know the system is broken.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nielson doesn't count anybody that they haven't contracted to keep a diary of their viewing habits.
Re:What's so hard about it (Score:3, Interesting)
Some people.
Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie? (Score:1, Interesting)
Seriously, is there anyone under the age of 40 who DOESN'T use a DVR anymore? And I don't mean the "I don't even *OWN* a TV!" snobs, I'm talking about average people. I can't imagine going back to watching live TV, and can't believe that Nielsen is still not taking me adequately into account.
You're probably right about Nielsen not accounting for your demographic, but on the flip side, I don't think your demographic is in the majority.
I'm an average person under 40. I watch TV, but I don't use a DVR. Most of my friends don't either. This is a big country. I don't think you can make generalizations based on your own demographic.
Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie? (Score:5, Interesting)
But I think most people who watch TV 8 hours a day will have pretty small disposable income. For a family of four, going from 25K a year income to 50K a year income, the total income ratio is just 2, but the disposable income ratio is going to be something like 4 or even 8. The profit margins are huge in the disposable income expenditure. When it comes to bread, milk and gas, the profit margins are very tight. That means, it is better to snag 1 hour of a family with large income than to fight to get 8 hours from a low wage earning family.
We were a Nielsen family. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie? (Score:3, Interesting)
What filtering?
I just set up for cable internet...TV (extended basic, and unscrambled HDTV) is free...just put a splitter on the wire.
Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie? (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing to consider is that advertisers are already adapting to the use of DVRs. Yes, they still have commercials, but there is also a considerable amount of product placement. Consider the NBC show "Chuck" [nbc.com] and its Subway product placement. Before the "Save Chuck" campaign even started, Subway maintained that this was their best product placement/commercial deal in years. [chucktv.net] It was well placed and quite amusing.
And guess who saw it. It wasn't just the old fogies who refuse to move into the modern age, but also the younger generation with our newfangled DVRs and PCs.
This is why having ALL of the ratings is important. Just because DVRs exclude most of the commercials, that doesn't mean that these viewers aren't important to the show's advertisers. The advertisers would just have to push into new ways of advertising outside of the standard commercial.
PS. I'll gladly sacrifice 2 minutes an episode to gain the 58 minutes of hilarity that is Chuck.
PPS. I know that the episode isn't really an hour long and that a bunch of time is cut out for commercials, but that's not the point.
Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie? (Score:3, Interesting)
MythTV [mythtv.org]...it takes a bit of patience and effort, but, well worth it in the in and will do what you want.
If you google around a bit, I believe you can find, for sale, MythTV boxes already put together as a turnkey item for you.
Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who is running Nielsen anyway, Leslie? (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to just watch the show? Hey, it's commercial free, brought to you by Amazon.com - enjoy!
Think of the money that could be made on these types of impulse purchases?!
Re:From the inside... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:That's why I still use iTunes for shows (Score:3, Interesting)
$2/episode is a lot of money. If you watch an hour of TV a night(way below average), that's about 3 shows once you cut out the ad time. Even if you only do that on week nights, that's $30 a week or $120 a month. Way too much to spend on TV.