I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

[yendi]

Both The Sarah Conner Chronicles and Dollhouse pick up a ton of extra viewers from DVRs as opposed to live Nielsen households.

The shock, of course, is at the idea that anyone still thinks that Nielsen ratings mean anything, statistically.

Comments

[yendi]

I'm not sure they ever really provided the service (the initial surveys were flawed in terms of both representation and data capture, they remained flawed for representation through the Nielsen box days, and they haven't handled time skipping since hte invention of the VCR).

They remain in business because the networks need some number -- any number -- to use to entice advertisers, and no one in the network/Nielsen/advertiser triangle is willing to talk about the complete lack of clothes on the emperor.

[coffeeinhell.livejournal.com]

True, the truthiness of the Nielsens has always been highly questionable. But at least they managed to fake it well enough for a long time that, as you point out, the industry could at least pretend that the numbers had some basis in reality. Not so much now.

Nielsen is a huge conglomerate (they own Billboard, Adweek, and The Hollywood Reporter, in addition to selling marketing info on TV, radio, and 'net) and they're deeply invested in old media. They outsourced a small number of jobs to India last year, and took heat for it. I think it's notable that they're returning to doing radio ratings this year for the first time in two decades -- I wonder if it's because, even with satellite radio, that market's not changing at the same pace as other media.