Nielsen to discover that no one watches commercials

Don't know what happened there. Here's the rest of my thought:

The current system may not be perfect, but I'll bet the billions and billions of dollars flung around based on ratings that the system is fairly accurate.

Tucker-
While the blog you linked to is quite funny, one anecdote does not invalidate the whole system. If what they did was truly rampant, there would be absolutely no consistency in the ratings. Yet this is not the case. There are small changes week to week, but the overall order of shows is roughly the same. This suggests that nearly every Nielsen family takes it seriously.

No sample is perfect, but show me evidence that this sample is not sufficiently representative of the population. The sample is carefully controlled for demographics. Why? You mention that Nielsen gives the networks and advertisers what they want. Well, what they want is an accurate picture of what people are watching. You accuse me of buying into the corporate bullshit, but what incentive does a corporation have to feed me bullshit about this? It's in their best interest to have accurate information about what I watch so they can sell more products.

How would you propose tracking the ratings? The current system may not be perfect, but

Actually with 1000 people or so, the margin of error would only be about 3% no matter how big the population.

Hey it annoys me too; most of the shows I love are VERY low rated.

Also, I seriously doubt that you have asked a thousand unrelated people what they watch.

Brian, take a look around. If you interact with anyone in this country, I think it'll become quite abundantly clear that the ratings are NOT an accurate representation. First of all, participants in the study are FULLY AWARE of what's going on, they're plied with various merchandise and gifts and in general are exposed to an enormous amount of bias. If that's not enough, the process is ridiculously complicated, leading to many "Nielsen Families" fudging results. I'm sure in YOUR statistics class, they mentioned "margin of error." I'm sorry, but no matter how supposedly well-crafted, a thousand people or so is NOT a representative sample. Just because you buy into all the corporate bullshit doesn't mean Nielsen's system isn't dubious.

Until recently, Nielsen only included "typical households" in their ratings. Yeah, now maybe they'll add a couple boxes in college dorms here and there, but what colleges? Brigham-Young? Nielsen's business revolves around telling TV networks and advertisers what they want to hear, it's in their best interest to make the ratings say what they want to say.

I hate to sling around insults, but from the sounds of it you buy everything you hear on the 6 o'clock news, too. If you really think Nielsen ratings are accurate to a T, then I've got a few tracts of land in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

Why not take a look at one "Nielsen Family" experience? There's one out of their "representative sample," how many others do you think behave this way?

http://www.meshsf.com/blogs/2005/03/i-was-nielsen-family.html

Tucker-
If you've taken a statistics course, then you know that small samples can be broadened to the general population. They just have to be "sufficiently large," which is scientifically defined based on the normal distribution. Just because you don't like what Nielsen finds doesn't mean the findings are wrong.

I actually miss some commercials. I didn't know about any of the Thanksgiving sales last year because I don't watch commercials. And the VW-crash commercials that got so much watercooler chat, I saw on-line.

They just need to develop new technology so I don't have to watch the same ones over and over again, or watch ones that I could not possibly have an interest in. If they can accomplish that, then the cost of advertising should go up because it's more relevant to the viewer.

Of course CBS' research shows that 40-50% still watch commercials, if the research showed showed lower numbers, CBS may have to charge less for advertising.

Brian- I have. Neilsen is still Bull. Shit.

I tivo everything I want to watch. Commercials are never watched in my house. Even when skimming, I'll stop on a show that might be interesting and then flip to the other tuner so i can continue to surf while recording the show I might watch (and thus can FFW past commercials).

If I'm so lazy that I don't want to watch something tivoed, I simply put on an HBO channel (HD usually). No commercials.

Tucker-
Take a statistics course.