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Originally posted by Thundar:
I knew someone who's Mom had a neilson box. They lived in a trailer and she has, really, no kidding, slept with her cousin.

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Originally posted by toomanymemories:
Said they had the average number of family members they wanted, husband and wife with three kids. .

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Now how does a family with a wife and three kids get to make choices for single males, or even younger married ones like myself?

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Originally posted by toomanymemories:

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Now how does a family with a wife and three kids get to make choices for single males, or even younger married ones like myself?

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I agree, I think it's a screwed up system. The only way it would work is if everyone had one. Since that's never gonna happen, there's no way for it to be accurate.

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Originally posted by toomanymemories:

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Now how does a family with a wife and three kids get to make choices for single males, or even younger married ones like myself?

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I agree, I think it's a screwed up system. The only way it would work is if everyone had one. Since that's never gonna happen, there's no way for it to be accurate.

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Originally posted by maugwai:
I think they need to use Tivo and DVR ratings more than neilson. For one thing, neilson always focuses on families. But so many people who are single watch Sci-Fi. If they checked Tivo instead of Neilson boxes, sci-fi shows' ratings would go through the roof, because those are the kind of people who watch sci-fi. That would certainly save Angel.

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Originally posted by BrownCoat1:

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Originally posted by maugwai:
I think they need to use Tivo and DVR ratings more than neilson. For one thing, neilson always focuses on families. But so many people who are single watch Sci-Fi. If they checked Tivo instead of Neilson boxes, sci-fi shows' ratings would go through the roof, because those are the kind of people who watch sci-fi. That would certainly save Angel.

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Using Tivo or DVR would most likely yield far more accurate data than Nielson boxes.

I wonder though......sponsors normally gear more towards the family, so that might be why they use the Nielson ratings to determine viewer numbers. They may not care about the individual so much.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

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Also don't forget that Tivo viewers like to skip the commercials. So the sponsors would only be interested in those people who are actually sitting down and watching the show as it's being broadcast. They don't care about people who tape/Tivo the show because those people won't watch the commercials.

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Originally posted by Forrestwolf:
Well, my wife and I participated in a survey when we were newly married - that was...urk...8 years ago. The company (not sure who it was) sent the forms to us, and we agreed. It was paper-only, no Nielson box, and we participated for one period (don't remember how long that was - a week or a month, perhaps?). Totally the honor system.

We probably marked down a fair number of sci-fi shows (what would that have been? DS9? B5?).

I haven't seen such a survey since.

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Why haven’t I ever met a "Nielsen family"?

Actually, you may have. There are hundreds of thousands of "Nielsen families", including diary and metered households. We ask our households not to reveal they are in the Nielsen Media Research panel. This protects their privacy and helps ensure the integrity of the panel. In the few cases where homes have revealed their NielsenTV status, we removed them from the metered panels or disregarded their diaries.

How many "Nielsen families" are there?

There are 5,000 households in the national People Meter sample, approximately 20,000 households in the local metered market samples, approximately 1,000 metered homes for our national and local Hispanic measurement, and nearly 1.6 million diaries are edited each year.

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Originally posted by Zelda:
I knew someone who had a Nielsen box. Technically, Nielsen families are apparently sworn to maintain some pretense of secrecy, so that their overzealous friends (like us) don't come over and hijack thier TV sets.

The person I knew was a female co-worker, young twenties, who lived with several roommates. It was similar to the scenario outlined above - Nielsen called them, asked them about their demographic info, and then asked them if they'd be interested in getting a Nielsen box.

Apparently the setup is a little bit of a pain. Before you watch anything you have to log in the demographic data of everyone in the room. It wasn't such a big deal for them, because they hardly ever watched TV. I was always trying to get her to watch Sports Night when it was on the bubble, but they were all out at sports practice or something.

Also, didn't I read somewhere that Nielsen has started incorporating some form of TiVo data into their ratings?

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Originally posted by canttakesky:


The Nielsen website explains:

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How many "Nielsen families" are there?

There are 5,000 households in the national People Meter sample, approximately 20,000 households in the local metered market samples, approximately 1,000 metered homes for our national and local Hispanic measurement, and nearly 1.6 million diaries are edited each year.

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From http://www.nielsenmedia.com/index.html

Can't Take My Gorram Sky

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Originally posted by lissa:
I think i'm gonna try and take a poll at my school and see how many people have a nielson box or know someone who has one. This system really sucks. If I think for much longer about how Angel could very likely not be cancelled right now with a better ratings system, I'm gonna start crying.

~lissa, spwhore

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