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February 5, 2008
TV Junkie: Tuesday
It's been going on all day as it is: election coverage. Obviously you have your choice to get this news all night: CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, and probably the best news source, Comedy Central. For all other decent viewing options see below.
And if elections aren't the equivalent of polling and monitoring then there's this recent bit about a challenge to the Nielsen ratings system. Looks like TNS Media Research is going to go head to head with Nielsen by teaming up with DirectTV to get 100,000 households monitored with second-by-second device-monitoring data vs. Nielsen't 12,000 self-monitored households. More competition in this area can only be a good thing as the value of Nielsen's small data pool has been questioned for decades. Tivo's also throwing their hat into the ring, more on that later.
8:00pm 10 Items or Less TBS - Ingrid wants to lose her virginity to one of her coworkers, she's got high standards evidently.
8:00pm All The King's Men TCM - (1949) If real politics are too much then how about some dramatized politics? This multi-Oscar winner is about a corrupted Southern politician. Corruption in politics? Now you know it's fiction.
9:00pm House FOX - Season Finale.
10:00pm LA Ink TLC - Orbi gets a, you guessed it, Roy Orbison tattoo
10:00pm Nip/Tuck FX - The cat-like Eden returns to Sean for some more work, she'd bad news, but oh so good.
11:30pm The Late Show With David Letterman CBS - Matthew McConaughey, Gary Mule Dear, Sheryl Crow (again?? she was on last night with a so-so performance).
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TNS isn't actually going "head to head" with Nielsen. The TNS service is more of a supplement to Nielsen data than anything else. You can't get an accurate measure of TV viewing when you're looking at only DirecTV homes. You can only get an accurate measure of DirecTV homes, or maybe satellite homes. Likewise with the TiVo measurement - TiVo viewers tend to be heavier TV consumers, so measuring their viewing would not be an accurate representation of all TV homes.
These services are valuable because they can give more detail (like second by second data), not because they will replace Nielsen. And one of the most valuable things Nielsen provides is demographic viewing data. Advertisers buy based on demos - they need to know WHO is watching in a home, not just WHAT is being watched. Until another service can provide demo viewing they will never replace Nielsen.
No, I don't work for Nielsen, but I do work in the industry.
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Thanks for your perspective HC! I understand what you're saying and I'm not so sure of the potential success of the proposed measuring systems. As a member of a former Nielsen family I have a lot of doubts about the value of the demographic data that they gather especially as it ages over time. Plus the data reporting method was a joke at the time and I'm not so sure it has improved compared to what TNS and Tivo can offer.
With the exponential number of viewing options that have sprung up in the last decade I think a larger and more representative sample is required. Nielsen has been stuck in the glory of its past prestige and it really deserves to be shaken up.
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Were you a people meter home or a household meter home? In a meter/diary market, Nielsen gets household viewing data from a household meter and demo data from diaries. The tricky part here is that the diaries are mailed to different homes (the reason being that it's hard to get compliance on diaries from homes that are already metered). Then the diary data is integrated with the meter data. It's easy to see why there are some issues with this.
People meters have remote controls with specific buttons assigned to household members. Whenever someone in the home watches TV, they're supposed to note that they're the one watching. Nielsen has demo info on each person so the viewing recorded on the meter can be matched up exactly to the same demo data. The concern here is viewer fatigue - that people don't push the button to show they're watching. It does seem to be a much more accurate measure of viewing though.
It's not a perfect system, but it's going to take a company with a LOT of capital to come in and really compete with Nielsen. And frankly, as television becomes less important and the internet gains, TV ratings will become less important as well. I suspect they'll eventually move to the personal people meter (Arbitron was working on one) that people carry with them and use to measure all media usage - TV, radio and eventually online.
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We were a household meter home - among the first to actually have a modem installed inside our TV set, this was back in 1981 or 1982. The people meter seems flawed because what happens when 1/2 the family is watching? Is everyone supposed to pass the remote control around? Not that TSM would solve that problem. The problem I feel is that the 12k isn't a large enough sample. I don't think it's such a horrible thing to have to * all your data with * = "DirectTV homes" if you are dealing with a larger and more distributed pool.
I agree that the personal people meter is an idea that is long past due. I've really enjoyed your feedback HC, thanks for reading and contributing. I know my posts are snide and snarky but I do have a genuine interest in this topic.