Nielsen to measure TiVo usage 331
ny_cable_guy writes "The following letter went out to all of Nielsen's clients this morning: 'Working together, Nielsen Media Research and TiVo have developed software that will enable the extraction of tuning, recording and playback information from TiVo's PVR system. TiVo has downloaded this new software as part of a normal system upgrade via phone lines to existing TiVo subscribers across the country. This software would be used only by Nielsen Media Research to retrieve data from sample households, and only with permission from the household, as is the case with all homes in our samples. It is otherwise inactive in non-Nielsen homes.' The full letter has been reprinted here on netWert."
That explains it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like a bright idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Ratings for Guide? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things that Tivo owners don't seem to like is paying the monthly fee to get the guide.
I wonder if giving up all your viewing habits might be valuable enough to cover funding the guide.
Part of why the guide is as much as it is, is that Tivo didn't want to make a lot on the boxes, but to make it instead on the guide (give away the razor...) But the other part, that I don't think many realize, is that the correlators of this guide data see it as a goldmine and want to exploit it as much as possible. You have to have big money just to even talk to them about getting at their guide data programatically.
This is why most of the open source PVRs are using screen scraping to get guide data. (If any one knows of a free guide service with the coverage of TV Guide, please correct me!) But even then they are tenuous-- TV Guide is counting on ads covering the cost of providing the guide via the web. What will happen when they work out that so many of their page views never request the advert images?
While I'm not confident that the value of providing viewing habits would cover the cost of providing the guide-- is this a tradeoff that you would make for your PVR?
Do you feel strongly about the monthly fee for guide service, and if you do, what alternative business model would you propose?
(Apologies if this seems offtopic, was figuring a lot would be worried about having their data go away, and wondering what the would make that a viable proposition for slashdotters.)
Why don't they measure commercial usage? (Score:5, Interesting)
When a commercial comes on, the viewer(s) are allowed to rate it on something like a 1 - 10 system. The results could be compiled and bad commercials could be automatically blocked (as a viewer preference) while good commercials could be compiled on the Tivo's drive and watched in a manner that the late adcritic.com had assembled.
I *watch* the Superbowl for the commercials. If this kind of system was implemented and widespread, commercials would become more effective and entertaining (or even informative). As a sidenote, it'd be cool if slashdot did something similar. I'm hesitant to mod down a post that I might disagree with even though I still might find it interesting. I.E. - INTERESTING+1, DISAGREE+1.
The world could be a better place, eh?
Why *not* to non-Neilsen homes too? (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems like a great opt-in opportunity to democratize the airwaves, as it were. Neilsen gets a bigger market sample to forecast with, ratings become more accurate (at least for the tech-savvy, tivo-owning demographic), and we get more input into the shows we like - more than "boycott this sponsor!" or a half-assed writein campaign.
Hell, if it meant I could opt-in, Neilsen or not, I'd buy a Tivo. You betcha.
GMFTatsujin
Awesome. I've wanted this for years. (Score:2, Interesting)
As I see it, I want my viewing habits to count. If there are thousands like me that love this show and dislike that show, then that should be reflected. There have to be cases where the determine-it-via-a-sample approach don't catch everything.
And better yet, it determines what we actually watch, not what we say we watch. If I say I really like show xyz because I want to like it but never actually watch it, that should be reflected in the ratings. Any Neilsen families using log books instead of automated devices goes through a filter we don't need it to.
Awesome. Sign me up.
Re:Excellent! More accurate demographics helps! (Score:5, Interesting)
So, what possible use could the Nielsons have for this data, since it's precisely the demographic that ignores advertisers?
I applied to be a Nielson viewer (Score:2, Interesting)
A canvasser came to my door and explained how the program works. Apparently, the prior owners of the house were Neilsons as well. We filled out an application, but the canvasser didn't know if TiVo would be a problem -- it was.
We got a call a week afterward saying that we couldn't participate. I wonder if I'll get another call. If I do, I can't tell you. No one is supposed to know who the Nielson families are.
Re:Excellent! More accurate demographics helps! (Score:5, Interesting)
I own the machine for a variety of reasons. Not watching commercials is not why I ran out to purcahse one. Personally I travel a great deal. When I do get home, I like to be able to watch the TV shows I missed while I was gone. Sure I could that with a VCR, but it would be a pain. (of course the VCR also lets me skip commercials, but its not why I bought it a long time ago.) TiVo makes it simple to do that. When I'm home on Thursday night and Friends is coming on, I don't wait for it to be over. I watch it live. Most people are not going to waste 30 minutes of their life so that they can watch 20 minutes of TV by skipping commericals.
If TV show producers would make shows so interesting to watch that I would always want to see it ASAP (aka Live), then I wouldn't have an oppertunity to skip commericals.
Its not as if Nielson is going to base ALL of their statistical data on the TiVo's viewer's habits. The percentage of TiVo viewers is very small. However, we are real people and so it simply broadens their sample with little effort on their part.
Re:omg!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
imagine the potential for that here...some hacker hacks the tivos...automatically opts them in for the recording...and then makes them record hours and hours of "junkyard wars"...suddenly it becomes the highest rated tv show ever...
Neilson compensation and privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
The way compensation works on the consumer panel (scan barcodes on what you buy and transmit once per week with acoustic coupler on scanner, also answer occasional surveys) is that you are awarded points for transmitting information. If you transmit four weeks in a month you get a "Super Scanner" bonus. The points for each week and "Super Scanner" go up if you've been with them longer. Also you get points for surveys.
The points are then used to "purchase" gifts from a catalogue. You scan the barcodes like a survey and in a couple of weeks your gift arrives. I've received about $1000 worth of stuff over the past 10 years and I still have a large number of unused points waiting to build up for a larger ticket item. The items change. Some of the nicer large ticket items include a small tv/vcr combo and a nice astronomical telescope (which I got for my kids).
Re:Good application of the TiVO (Score:3, Interesting)
I am willing to be that the future of web advertising might make better use of product placement than it generally does now as we see pop-ups phased out (like iVillage and AOL seem to be leabing toward).
AOL has already started with their IM that pops up a user portal by default when you open up your IM interface, at least on Mac and Windows. You get some mindless junk to click around on, but notice that Time Warner gets to push a lot of their latest entertainment content that way.
Re:Good application of the TiVO (Score:3, Interesting)
Marketing/advertising is a flawed idea, that has outlived its usefulness in human civilization.
Not that that will stop it. You ask who "will pay for" questions, never stopping to realize how much money is wasted on it. Those doing the wasting don't seem to mind, so who cares, right?
There are better ways, more efficient ways, for customers to find what they want/need, that isn't the social equivalent of carpet-bombing. These ways don't use barely ethical psychological tricks to persuade people to buy. Sure, some companies would go under, the ones that don't have a product truly worth buying... will that be so sad?
When it's all said and done, I expect to pay something for my TV viewing, but I don't want ads crammed down my throat. I don't have to read a page of advertising for every 10 I read in a novel (though I hope I don't give any ambitious little cockraoches any ideas).
Re:Nielsen continues to measure the wrong thing (Score:2, Interesting)
*********
Frankly - and with due respect to engineers - it *just this attitude* that results in the impossible UI problems that consumers have been facing forever.
I would recommend Alan Cooper's book "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum" to anyone that thinks consumers are to blame for all the thousands of hard-to-use technology products out there. It's exactly the reverse.
Cooper was one of the founders of a discipline called Interaction Design. This discipline looks at what the *goals* of a consumer are relative to the technology proposed. It's a process that delimits feature creep, employs strict architecture and coding templates, and keeps engineers working on a path that's based on *consumer preference* (relative to goals), instead of "hey, let's use this cool piece of legacy code", or " let's throw in this cool feature".
The same could be said for broadcasting behemoths - they just don't listen. Look at the billions (literally) wasted on poor programming.
It doesn't have to be that way.
Something TiVo and Nielson may be overlooking: (Score:2, Interesting)
If a substantial portion of viewers use TiVo's "instant replay" feature on a given portion of a program, the data gathered could be used to figure out why people like certain shows.
Think of the ramifications. Nielson discovers which jokes are funny, which commercials are entertaining, how many times we're willing to sit through a given commericial, how many times viewers use "instant replay" to see Britney's tits bounce.
All of it leads to fewer repetitive commercials, better programming, and a valuable catalog of desirable programming attributes. Maybe it could even convince American networks that a little T&A goes a long way, and attracts enough viewers to compensate for the overly vocal "religious right". To be honest, I think watching T&A is a bit like picking your nose or peeing in the shower. Most people do it, but they'd never admit to it.
Hell, give out one remote per family member. The "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" can tell you that Mr. Jones loves The O'Reilley Factor, but The Mrs. can't stand it. Voting with your eyeballs just became possible.
Personally, I'd like to see commercials targeted to my demographic. I (and my wife (thank God)) could give a damn about the "New Size 14+ Maxi-Pads", but show me a commercial about the new Nissan 350Z, and I'm not gonna use the 30-second skip. And stop showing so many damned AOL ads. I ain't buying it.
I want a TV that knows what I like in commercials and in programming. Pretty soon, I'm going to have it.