Nielsen Will Measure TV ratings Among DVR Users

prostoalex writes "TV ratings publisher Nielsen is one company that got affected by the digital video recorder boom. With 7 million households recording TV shows and watching them on their own schedules, the concept of primetime changes, and the audience reporting is becoming skewed. So now Nielsen is launching a special program for DVR households, which would allow advertisers and TV executives to track the popularity of TV programs. Nielsen plans to distribute paper diaries among the households that use digital video recorder. Last time I did a Nielsen TV rating diary, they paid $5 a week."

Torrents?

[Laivincolmo]

I wonder if they'll ever start surveying torrent downloaders of tv shows... :)

Already signed up.

[Anonymous Coward]

My DirecTiVo asked me awhile ago if I wanted to participate. I don't mind sharing data on what TV I watch, and if it will report it automatically to help the shows I do enjoy be renewed and stay on the air, I think it's great. I've also done a radio diary once, it was a pain to keep track of. This will make the process a lot easier.

Maybe some good shows will be saved

[sdo1]

I had regularly TiVo'd the live-action version of "The Tick". When it was canceled, I remembered reading news articles about the time it was on and how that killed it in the ratings. And I, a TiVo user, had absolutely NO CLUE when it was actually broadcast. None. All I knew was sometime during the week a new episode showed up on the Now Playing list, so when I had a bit of spare time, I watched it.

It's good that they're taking this step. Maybe some otherwise decent shows will show higher ratings now.

-S

Re:Already signed up.

[MBCook]

So did I. No only do I not mind people tracking what I'm watching, I WANT them to to monitor it. Anything I can to do to try to show how little I like much of the innane and stupid TV that's on these days (and to help them realize some of those little gems that I don't want to ever dissapear).

That said, they said that they would call me if I was in (IIRC) and I've yet to be called.

Effect of broadcast flag deployment?

[G4from128k]

As a veteran time-shifter, I can only hope (but not hold my breath) that this service might convince broadcasters not to set aggressive limits on shifted viewing of "prime-time" shows. Once the media moguls understand that many viewers don't live life in 30-minute slots, they may be less likely to prevent time-shifting. On the other hand, I tend to time shift by weeks or months and I could see broadcasters setting the system to limit viewing to when 99% of viewers are watching with recording expiry times of only a few days.

Perhaps its time to stockup on pre-broadcast flag equipment.

What's the point of a diary in this case?

[FunWithHeadlines]

I don't understand. Why ask people to keep a diary? Isn't the whole idea of a DVR that your viewing habits are being digitally tracked automatically? A diary is weak since it depends on people keeping up with it, filling it out accurately, and so on. So why use that here? Just get the cable companies to release the data that they must be collecting in the aggregate (if not in the specific, for all I know).

Or are there rules against doing that with digital subscribers? I've assumed from the moment I got a DVR from Time Warner that if they wanted to they could track my viewing habits on a second-by-second basis, which beats the pants off any diary method.

And yes, Time Warner has by now caught on to how I like old movies and Star Trek...

Who needs ratings?

[ScrewMaster]

They should immediately cancel the few solidly-written, well-produced, well-acted shows currently on the air, continue producing thousands more hours of video dreck, those vacuous "series" that are as indistinguishable from each other as they are from white noise, and save themselves the worry about "ratings". It's what they really want to do anyways: TV executives seem continually surprised when people actually watch a quality production. It was predicted that Star Trek: The Next Generation would be too "highbrow" for the American audience and would fail miserably (this from some of the folks at Paramount, no less.) I mean, good heavens, a Shakespearean actor in the lead role? That it became a true hit series just blew them away, and that it was a hit among people of all walks of life, not just technojocks, nerds, and old-line Trekkies like me was especially shocking to them.

I mean ... what was the whole point of denaturing the education system in this country to the point where college graduates can't write in full sentences if not to produce a generation of mindless boobs incapable of appreciating a good literary reference or understand humor any less subtle than a Mack truck. Apparently that effort has failed because we do still appreciate a good show with high production values, on those rare occasions when we see one.

Re:One thing they carefully will NOT measure...

[Saeger]

Two more words: "Video Overlay"

If product placement gets bad enough, you can bet your ass that the DVR's worth having will also have the ability to download dynamic edit files off the net that can overlay/blur/cut-out the annoying branding. It's not THAT hard to do, and only one person or "release group" has to do it in order to make it available to millions.

Suddenly all the annoying "FedEx" boxes in Castaway, for example, become barely noticable "Acme" refs, saving you from being mentally engineered like consumer cattle.

--

Paper? $5/week??? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

This SO explains what tv companies are doing. Their data is based on people who are willing to fill out a paper jounrla of their viewing activities for 5 bucks a week - i.e. who are fucked up enough to sacrifice their priuvacy for a measly sum that is not even a compensation for the time spent on it, even when you discard any notions of surveillance.

Let's see, $5 buys how much of my spare time? Maybe 10 minutes if I am generous, less if it's a task I don't like.

They could NEVER convince me to hand them over my viewing habits unless I knew for certain it would be reliably anonymized. And even then they'd have to pay me more like $100-$400 a week, depending how much effort it is!

$5/week, I haven't laughed this much in quite a while.

Re:Torrents?

[MikeBabcock]

I downloaded all the episodes of Alias seasons 1, 2 and 3. I plan to do so for 4 when it comes out as well. Why? Because some kind person makes HDTV versions available -- which are higher quality than the DVDs I bought of the same, and I don't own an HDTV TV; I watch them on my computer.

Yes, I bought the DVDs -- why? Because I want to give them a few bucks toward the next season. Vote with your wallet.

Choice of PVR

[Baseclass]

I'm surprized that here on Slashdot (the epitome of geekiness) more people don't use homebrew PVRs like MythTV [mythtv.org] or Freevo [freevo.org].

While I may be a paranoid tinfoil hat wearing nut who doesn't want Tivo knowing what I watch and rewind, my reasoning is dictated more by the fact that I like to customize my box, add functionality, watch videos I download, and freely distribute content to every PC in my house.

The WAF (wife approval factor) is quite high, and it's definitely a hit with the kids. Add the fact that I've learned way more about Linux in the past year than I did over the past 6 years as a casual user and I consider the project a huge success.

Re:WHISKY

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed out Yankee