PS: Of course, eventually we'll be 20 Minutes Into The Future and ratings will be instantaneous and measure everyone.

I TiVo Drawn Together and I think it is hilarious. :-) Very, very, VERY wrong - but still hilarious.

I think Nielsen's system is out-dated. TiVo uses 20,000 boxes for their ratings info already. There really isn't any reason they couldn't crunch the numbers from all 4.5 million boxes, except it would take a lot of computing power - and there is no real reason to do so when a smaller sample works. But, because of the diversity of content today, I think we need larger samples to be more representative. As TiVo gets into cable boxes that'll give them a broader base. Nielsen needs to do deals with cable MSOs to sample from the boxes, satellite boxes, etc. Instead of putting their own boxes into homes, which is an antiquated approach, use the millions of data collection points already in homes.

As someone who lives in a dorm and watches more tv than anyone I know, I feel like I have a right to ask... Where's my box?? TV-savvy students given this type of power could singlehandedly save shows that are failing, and instead they are wasting their precious statistics on Drawn Together? I've never met one college student who liked that show (though I've never met a non-student who liked it, either). Give me a box! Let me save Veronica Mars, Friday Night Lights, and all of the other shows that intelligent college kids actually enjoy.

[insert obligatory Family Guy FCC episode reference here]