Comments on: American Idol has most DVR viewers, The Office has greatest share of viewing by DVR

By: idizzle

idizzle — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:45:34 +0000

“Do you ever see any DirecTView data? Or STB data of any kind? Unless you do, I don’t believe you can say definitively that gaps “do” or “do not” exist.”

This is simply thinking out loud and not based on anything I claim to know, but if DirectTV knew their shows were grossly underestimated by Nielsen and had hard data to back this up, why would they not come forward with that?
Not hearing about any such disputes seems to hint at one of three scenarios.
1) DirectTV has no such data
2) Nielsen and other data are the same within a reasonable margin of error
3) Nielsen overestimates those shows.
It certainly does not suggest that Friday Night Lights is watched by ten times as many viewers as Nielsen numbers reflect.

By: Fin

Fin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:10:36 +0000

Hasn’t Heroes DVR just gone up: alot of its audience is just switiching to DVRing the show. I wonder whether its only a small audience that is leaving the show. Plus doesn’t like 45% of the average person not skip threw at least 1/2 of the adverts when DVRing

By: clutz

clutz — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:59:15 +0000

Bill, this STB data challenge is understandable. Why would any company give away stuff for which its core customers are willing to pay? Along those lines, I’m sure Nielsen offers more details to paying customers. I just wish the DirecTView team could do SOMETHING that’s open to the public.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:13:29 +0000

clutz, we don’t see DirecTView data. Nielsen most certainly measures DirecTV subscribers within its US national sample. While Nielsen may break out DirecTV-only viewing data separately for paid customers, we have never seen it. We’d love to get cable set top box data or satellite box data. We’re working on it.

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:10:58 +0000

Steve, I believe it is at least a couple of years, but it is not indefinitely.

Patrick, we all hear the same excuses every single day. It’s old. Find a new excuse for why your show shouldn’t be canceled. You commenting on a blog about how you think that Nielsen MUST BE WRONG is not going to change the industry standard.

By: clutz

clutz — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:04:39 +0000

For what it’s worth, Mr. Seidman, I have asked a few times, via customer support functions if DirecTV could say anything about the DirecTView STB data. I’m very curious to see data related to Friday Night Lights. To this day, I can’t find anyone to confirm whose data was used to determine FNL viewership levels. Read a newspaper article on the subject, and you’ll see that DirecTV never cites Nielsen as the source of their numbers (at least not that I’ve read). Anyway, my questions are always greeted with the same response: “we’re sorry, but that information is proprietary.” Do you ever see any DirecTView data? Or STB data of any kind? Unless you do, I don’t believe you can say definitively that gaps “do” or “do not” exist. I’m hoping we reach a point where ratings data via DirecTView or other STB services is available for public consumption. Right now, we are not at that point.

By: Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:00:58 +0000

Julia says:
March 26th, 2009 at 7:40 am
If you guys hate Nielsen so much, stop following ratings. All your arguments are moot, and if seeing ratings is just going to provoke a negative response, it’s better to just pretend Nielsen doesn’t exist. Either you follow the ratings and accept that this is what is the industry standard, or you find something else to do with your time. The Nielsen is flawed! arguments every week begin to get tiresome.

This is not to say that Nielsen is perfect. No one, not even Nielsen, would claim that. But we’ve all heard the story before, and it would be nice if we didn’t have to hear it at least twice a week, every week.

Well, if the networks didn’t use those to decide the fate of shows we like, nobody would say a word. But obviously, that isn’t happening. It’s in every aspect of television…kids shows, reality TV, sports.

Think about this: the University of Notre Dame has an exclusive TV contract with NBC to broadcast their home football games. (they can’t control the rights of their away games) Despite a 3-9 season in 2007, NBC renews the contract for more money? Why? Ratings. People tune into Notre Dame football in droves, whether to see them win or get their butts kicked. Very few people on the fence when it comes to that team. Why does ESPN constantly show ACC and Big East teams? They’re the ones that get the ratings, whether people in the midwest and west like it or not. Same thing with Red Sox/Yankee games.

We have to talk about the Nielsens, because the Nielsens control the Benjamins, and the Benjamins control the TV set.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:00:12 +0000

Does anyone know how long you are a Nielsen viewer? Is it yearly or a couple of years or however long you want to do it?

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:52:27 +0000

Just to correct thing a bit, there are more like 20,000 Nielsen people meters currently in US households.

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:40:19 +0000

If you guys hate Nielsen so much, stop following ratings. All your arguments are moot, and if seeing ratings is just going to provoke a negative response, it’s better to just pretend Nielsen doesn’t exist. Either you follow the ratings and accept that this is what is the industry standard, or you find something else to do with your time. The Nielsen is flawed! arguments every week begin to get tiresome.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:37:59 +0000

Jack, nice tinfoil hat! Here’s my problem with these conspiracy theories. Set top box data IS available (it doesn’t have the demo data but it does have aggregate numbers) but there are different flavors of the data available. TNS, Rentrak, etc. The data is available and has been for a while. Putting aside that it will not match Nielsen’s data since it’s not trying to project out to any particular population, but reporting what was directly measured, if there were truly huge gaps when you attempted to normalize, don’t you think we’d hear about them constantly?

I’ve never seen a single “TNS disputes Nielsen measurement” or vice versa. You’d think we’d see them if they existed. So your conspiracy must extend to a scenario where it’s in the interest of both Nielsen’s and the reporters of STB data to keep everything quiet.

By: Jack

Jack — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:18:42 +0000

The cable/satellite companies are deeply afraid of exposing their ability to collect viewing habits, because they think it will cause a public uproar. Americans are in a constant fear of Big Brother and will project that fear into anything once someone points it out. Nielsen would capitalize on that fear by attacking any number that contradicts their own. Think I am just building up a conspiracy theory? Consider this. The most successful conspiracies are not between multiple entities but by two. Nielsen owns them both.

By: clutz

clutz — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:17:30 +0000

One other fundamental flaw of the Nielsen system is a flaw of using statistcal sampling to study pretty much any human behavior: Nielsen randomly selects participants at the very first screening level. But then, participants must consent to being observed via meters or diaries. This consent negates the “random sample” factor, which is key to valid statistical sampling. I fully understand and accept why true random sampling cannot be used here.

By: clutz

clutz — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:11:34 +0000

Jack, Steve, Chris, and company,
You all raise interesting points on the Nielsen system. The truth of the matter is, they’ve had the market cornered for decades on any type of statistcal sampling to determine television broadcast trends. I think they are horribly flawed, but the TV industry seems dead-set to use them. What Nielsen has done, for as long as they’ve done it, has been good enough to keep them in business.

When Soundscan started showing some discrepancies in music markets versus the Nielsen-owned Billboard magazine, Nielsen fought back buy purchasing Soundscan, by the way. Now if TNS and DirecTV would just allow one iota of their DirecTView data to be open to the public, we’d have some basis for discussion of Nielsen accuracy. Sadly, no other public data is available (at least I can’t find any). So Nielsen ratings are the only game in town, as far as the general public knows.

Back on topic: it is comforting to see “Friday Night Lights” on the DVR charts. At least someone, somewhere is watching this fine drama

By: Jack

Jack — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:54:53 +0000

Chris, what if it did the opposite? What if it wiped out seemingly popular shows and revealed the niche markets to be far more popular? The recording industry considered country music to be a niche market, until SoundScan. Now it is one of the biggest genres in the US. A good question is if the country watches popular shows because they like them, or because they are told they are popular.

By: Chris the TV sage

Chris the TV sage — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:50:17 +0000

My question for the “Nielsen is wrong!” crowd:

What if it turns out Nielsen actually grossly OVERestimates the number of viewers for (insert low-rated sci-fi/fantasy show that you love) ?

The people-meter system is so invasive that I’d have to imagine those who have a vested interest in keeping a certain show on the air would be more willing to be signed up as a Nielsen family.

What if a more accurate system wiped those kind sof shows out completely?

By: Jack

Jack — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:39:34 +0000

Nielsen boxes can also measure number of people in a room. Statistically, Nielsen’s method is valid, but that is only when you discount the regional social and cultural variances. That is why many consider the Nielsen system deeply flawed. There is a fundamental problem in the matrix. Correlation does not imply causation.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:38:50 +0000

Boy, I understand they can back their reasoning with statistics but it is just a little scary that a shows fate can be decided by 10,000 boxes. Of course all of those 10,000 people or families who have those boxes are all upstanding people and would never be subject to being bribed (just saying there is a lot of money involved in these TV shows). By the way I love your website and how you consistently get back to people when they have questions it is appreciated.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:18:36 +0000

Steve, what you are missing is how statistical sampling works. But otherwise, I think you are pretty much on the mark although it's not entirely accurate to say they get no information from cable or satellite as cable and satellite would be/should be fairly represented within the Nielsen sample.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:13:54 +0000

I have a question, can you please tell me if I am right or wrong on this.
I went to the Nielsenmedia webisite and read how they get there information plus read your PDF and could you please tell me if I am reading this correctly. How they get there results are from 10,000 boxes and from 1.6 million people who fill out a diary? They don’t get any information from cable or satellite companies, so roughly 1.7 million people decides what stays on TV and what does not. So it really does not matter what anyone does as far as getting anyone to watch a show whether you watch it live or not or if you have a cable box or a satellite box or just watch it over the air. If you are not one of the 1.7 million people from Nielsen what you watch and how you watch it does not count at all. So if am correct the fast daily metrics are from the 10,000 boxes so 1 person represents close to 3 million viewers, If this is true how they figured 98 million people watched the super bowl was figured out by 10,000 people. Am I missing something here?