Farscape rumors poping up again

[jdavis]

Yes, but the primary purpose of TV is to make money. Creativity is only one possible means to that end. If it isn't a terribly effective means, you won't see it much.



Yeah, and that viewing audience, in total, is something like 100 million households. Do you want to try to keep up with 100 million pen pals?

Let's not oversimplify. I'm not a fan of the Neilsen's small sample size, but proper and accurate market research isn't easy, or cheap. You're talking about tracking viewing information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across a nation of 260+ million people. If you ask that each network try to gather that information for itself, you're talking about a lot of duplicated work. And the expense may be more than independant stations can handle on their own. Centralizing the operation so that it is more efficient and affordable makes all kinds of sense.

The Neilsen operation desperately needs to use a larger sample size, and networks probably ought to supplement the Neilsen information with more market research, but the basic idea is pretty sound.

Actually I was quite impressed with what I read up on the Nielson system, it is a very complex statistical model they have in place. The biggest problem I saw was the pathetic sample size. I'm sure that their are a lot of reasons involved with this but it's one of the first things you learn in any statistics class, The bigger the sample size the more accurate the results. It probably worked real well in the 70's and 80's when there were so many fewer choices for people to make in what they watched but now most basic cable services offer 30 to 60 channels + (not counting upgraded channel selections, digital cable selections or Satellite Dishes). That's a lot of choices to extrapolate from such a small sample size, and lets not even get into the fact that not everyone who becomes a Nielsen family is 100% honest or reliable, the box system relies on a remote control to tell it who is watching the show, if you forget to press your button when you watch a show you could be responsible for a show loosing thousands of dollars in advertising money, forget to hit the button when you get up and it thinks you watched TV all night long(my parrot watches 8 hours of Cartoon Network a day while we are off to work/school, would you really want my bird's viewing habits counting for ratings, he whistles a mean Ed Edd and Eddy theme though). Another part of it is they rely on written diaries too which is entirely subjective (and if I am reading right are a separate sample entirely from the set top boxes). All in all the biggest problem isn't that it's a flawed system, it's that it is the only system, there is no balance or way of checking their numbers because they are a monopoly, so we really don't know how well the system works.

Here is a good article on the system and problems with it: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/entertainment/s_165677.html
Here is a article on future technology and present problems: http://www.cofc.edu/~ferguson/bcp/updates/chap2/TV%20ratings%20system%20getting%20tech%20upgrade.htm
Nielsen's looking into TIVO: http://news.com.com/2100-1040-948580.html
Boston stations don't support Nielsen ratings and are doing good ad buisness anyway (the fee for Nielsen's service is $750,000!?!): http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2002/10/07/story4.html?page=1
Details into how the system works: http://www.med.sc.edu:1081/matharticles.htm

 

[takyris]

EDIT: Wrote entire post about how Nielson people can't handle Tivo, and then clicked some of the above links and saw that my info is no longer accurate (I was denied as a Nielson person a year or so ago because I have Tivo).

Entire useless post.

 

[jdavis]

EDIT: Wrote entire post about how Nielson people can't handle Tivo, and then clicked some of the above links and saw that my info is no longer accurate (I was denied as a Nielson person a year or so ago because I have Tivo).

Entire useless post.

Yea the TiVo community put quite a bit of pressure on them (I think there was even a TiVo based rating system idea). Now that so many newer computer video cards have the ability to record tv on hard drives and that TiVo is starting to catch on it was a area they had to address (I thought it was funny that Networks who were complaining about shows gettting low-balled on the ratings were worried about checking TiVo usage as so many people don't watch the commercials with TiVo.)

Another link I stumbled across, apparently they are going to double the sample size to 10,000 households in the near future: http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_news.cfm?newsID=196447

 

[Storm Raven]

(I thought it was funny that Networks who were complaining about shows gettting low-balled on the ratings were worried about checking TiVo usage as so many people don't watch the commercials with TiVo.)

Two words: product placement.

What? You thought the characters on the shows you watch just happened to drink Coke, wear Tommy Hilfiger clothes, and eat Dominoes pizza?