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If you don't have a Nielsen box

W

westtim

Beyond the rim
If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

Many times I have read that if one is not a member of the Nielsen ratings sample then one can not do anything to help Rangers. This of course is untrue. By spreading the word about Rangers we will eventually hit a Nielsen family. So I encourage everyone to tell friends and co-workers about "Rangers".

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Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

There is another reason to watch the movie, it's new B5.

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"Crying isn't gonna get your dog back. Unless your tears smell like dog food. So you can sit here eating can after can of dog food until your tears smell like dog food or you can go out there and find your dog."-Homer in The Canine Mutiny
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

I'd heard that digital cable and satellite receivers were going to automatically include anything you watch in the ratings figures, as they're reported back to the cable/satellite company, but I don't know whether it's happening yet.

We've been a Nielsen family twice but not since we switched to digital cable. That doesn't mean anything, of course. (Both times were during sweeps when Sci-Fi was airing stuff like non-stop awful movies and reruns of bad 80's SF...)


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Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

If anyone can verify that digital cable fact (if they are counted in ratings) please post it here. I have digital cable. Granted, I am going to be watching it anyway, but Id like to know if it counts or not!

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'I don't believe in the no-win scenario' - JTK
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

Nielsen uses a sample that is representative of the U.S. population. Digital cable households are part of the sample to the degree that they are in the population. No more/no less.

If digital cable is 10% of the population than it should be 10% of the sample. (I don't know if that is the exact number)

They may have the technology to determine what *all* subscribers are watching, as does my TiVo, but they aren't providing it to Nielsen. That information is proprietary to the companies collecting it.

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Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

Hrmm.

I have 2 TVs and 2 Digital Cable boxes. Maybe I'll just play it safe and turn them both on to Sci-Fi on the 19th
wink.gif


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'I don't believe in the no-win scenario' - JTK
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

People sometimes forget that Nielsen is a statistical research tool. It must be as close to a random sample as possible. They look more at how many families of 4,3, etc or single households they get numbers from than anything else, I think. To take all data from one media (like digital cable) would throw off the statistical validity of the data.

Of course, many people question the statistical validity of Nielsen anyway. But they do honestly try to give the most accurate information possible.


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"The Bible is a book: it is a good book, but is is not the only book" - Inherit the Wind
* Quote is from memory, please advise if incorrect/incomplete*

"I do not believe that the same God who
has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."—Galileo

hypatia@b5fan.b5lr.com
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by hypatia:
Of course, many people question the statistical validity of Nielsen anyway. But they do honestly try to give the most accurate information possible.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What people don't seem to realize is that the companies that purchase Nielsen's data--networks and advertising agencies--do have statisticians monitoring Nielsen's methodology constantly and advising them.

Nielsen doesn't operate freely with no oversight whatsoever.


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Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

True, SavantB5. If there were indications that Nielsen's numbers were wildly inaccurate, Nielsen would be out of business. They would not include data that would heavily lean towards the higher technology (higher income) crowd. The advertisers want to know who is watching what so they know where/how to advertise.

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"The Bible is a book: it is a good book, but is is not the only book" - Inherit the Wind
* Quote is from memory, please advise if incorrect/incomplete*

"I do not believe that the same God who
has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."—Galileo

hypatia@b5fan.b5lr.com
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

Actually, as long as the Source (and any Demographic info) of the data were included, all the networks Will want as much information as they can get about who watches what on Digital & Satellite.

Knowing where the data comes from tells them quite a bit. Plus, the larger the "sample" the better the survey.

The trick is getting the Demographic data.

Neilson families provide it.
Cable and Satellite customers do not. The best they can do there is sort it by Neighborhood.
That gives them an approximation of Family Income, but none of the really Juicy info like numbers & genders of all the people in the house.



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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by bakana:
Actually, as long as the Source (and any Demographic info) of the data were included, all the networks Will want as much information as they can get about who watches what on Digital & Satellite.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Maybe, maybe not. Remember that they'd likely have to pay somebody for this data, and it's something that does them absolutely no good from a business standpoint, since ad agencies won't buy based on it. So perhaps they'd be interested in it for analytical purposes, but I'd be surprised if that would be important enough for them to bother.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Plus, the larger the "sample" the better the survey.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not quite true. In fact, entirely false in this context.

The size of the sample is completely irrelevant if it does not accurately represent the population. The digital cable and satellite audience is not by any stretch of the imagination a representative sample of anything except itself.



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-- Marty
"Always do what you're good at," they tell me.
So I go around annoying people.
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

Everything Martin Roth just wrote is absolutely correct.

Nielsen is the currency that all advertising buys are made. A survey of satellite customers only would only be of interest if your advertising is going *only* to satellite customers. In the case, of B5LR, the advertising will be seen by people with cable and satellite.

The most important thing to a researcher is the representativeness of the sample. It would serve no purpose to oversample the satellite TV population because that would mean you are undersampling others.

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Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

Marty, these days, the Satellite & Cable audience comes close to Being the population.

Particularly in the more rural and/or mountanous areas where broadcast is almost impossible to get.
That's what Started cable in the first place.
People who couldn't GET TV any other way.

I did qualify my comments by noting that, lacking the detailed demographic data of Neilson, the value of the data is low.
But, the marketing people would still take it if the price is right.
And, as was mentioned earlier, they DO sometimes market directly to Cable or Satellite customers.

The advantage, for the marketing people, is that the data from Cable or Satellite viewers wouldn't BE a Sample. It would be All the viewers of that particular company.
IOW, they could tell you, by City or neighborhood, exactly how many boxes wre tuned to a particular show.

That could lead to some interesting tricks in itself.
Like shows that are Only sent to particular markets (like New England, for instance) because nobody in Georgia or the Carolinas cares.
It'd be the reverse of the "blackout" for sports events when the game is played in a town.

Marketing people already Do that sort of trick when they test new Commercials.
They show the commercial only in a particular city or state to see what impact it has on sales as compared to a different comercial in a different location.
The one that does best goes nationwide.


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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by bakana:
Marty, these days, the Satellite & Cable audience comes close to Being the population.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Remember, we were talking about digital cable, not just cable. The problem with attempting to measure "standard" cable in this way is that there are too many people who don't use a measurable cable box to tune channels.

There are some other issues here as well. For instance, what about the people (like me
smile.gif
)who leave the box turned on all the time, and simply switch the television off? You'd be overstating their viewing unless you came up with some methodology for estimating how long they were really watching.

Then, of course, there's the fact that the providers of the data are companies who have a vested interest in making the numbers come out higher, particularly when so many cable providers are also cable channel owners. Whether or not they'd fudge things, the conflict of interest would make people less willing to rely on those numbers.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>The advantage, for the marketing people, is that the data from Cable or Satellite viewers wouldn't BE a Sample. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

True, and a good point. But, even aside from the issues I mentioned above, you're talking about a lot of data, requiring a lot of computing power to process it into any kind of usable numbers. From a theoretical standpoint this would be a huge benefit; from a practical standpoint I'm not sure it'd work out that way.


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-- Marty
"Always do what you're good at," they tell me.
So I go around annoying people.
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> you're talking about a lot of data, requiring a lot of computing power to process it into any kind of usable numbers. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not really. the Total number of Viewers is large, but the amount of Data they are collecting is going to be limited.

The trick is distinguishing between Information and Data. They've got the raw data on how many people tuned in to what shows.
Maybe even segregated by City & Neighborhood.
What they Don't have is the detailed demographic data Neilson collects.

And, even if they had that, the same type programs Neilson uses would be capable of handling the number crunching.

So, they are working in the 100,000 range instead of the 10,000 range for each total.

The Computer doesn't really Care much how many Zeros there are on the end of the numbers it crunches.
The actual Calculation takes about the same amount of time.

250,000 divided by 10,000,000 yields the same answer as 250 divided by 10,000.

The trick is that the information is not going to arrive as individual data records.
The local Cable office or satellite office will already have done preliminary totals before delivering it.

They will be telling Marketing: 100,000 housholds in Podunk, NY, 99911 had their boxes on last night.
10,000 of them were watching the Nude Rosie O'Donnell episode.
5,000 of those evidently barfed on the set because the power went out.
Another 20,000 were watching the "Diagnosis Murder" rerun.
Everybody else was watching "Legend Of The Rangers".

The advertisers will then add the totals from Podunk, Tucson, Secaucus and Miami, and decide what the Total audience was nationwide.
Then they will sort everything according to the average income per Zip Code and check to see which of the neighborhoods watching which show has the most expensive houses.
I've run programs that sorted 30,000,000 records or more in less than 15 minutes, producing the various subtotals as they went.

Today's computers are Fast.




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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by bakana:
They've got the raw data on how many people tuned in to what shows.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No, that is not the raw data.

The raw data is the actual feed from every single cable box of every single channel that was viewed, and at what times. It's huge.

That is what has to be processed into the numbers of people who tuned in to what shows. It doesn't happen by magic.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>[/B]The local Cable office or satellite office will already have done preliminary totals before delivering it.[/B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ah, now I see what you're getting at.

OK, fine. So each local office will need to have hardware and software installed for this purpose, with a dedicated support staff to keep it all up and running in the thousands of different locations. Which probably makes things even more difficult than doing it all in one place.

The processing of the huge raw data set needs to happen someplace, one way or another.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>The advertisers will then add the totals from Podunk, Tucson, Secaucus and Miami, and decide what the Total audience was nationwide.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Except that it really isn't that simple, even considering your "sorting" description. The advertisers care more about things like reach and frequency from spot placements - the definitions of which I'm not going to go into unless somebody says they really care. In the US TV market, these numbers are generally modelled based on more than just the total viewer counts.

And that's not even getting into the issue of full respondent level data, which is available for most electronic media measurements around the world, but not for US TV at the moment.

And also doesn't address the other methodological issues I raised above. Or the conflict of interest problem.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Today's computers are Fast.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But not infinitely so.


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-- Marty
"Always do what you're good at," they tell me.
So I go around annoying people.
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

Just to complicate this some more, I saw some kind of news item years ago about how Nielson might try to improve its data. They had some kind of monitor, a motion detector maybe, and were trying to see if they could measure when someone is actually in the room watching the tv.

I am a bad one for that: leaving the tv on while I'm in the computer room, not really watching. I'd never report that to "Nielson" as "viewing", though. But obviously, old Nielson is constantly trying to find ways to give better data.

This is an expensive little game we are playing here. But I, for one, would not want a record of what I am watching to be recorded and stored somewhere. Now, before you lay in with the "what does hypatia watch?" jokes, I just mean it would be a bit too big-brother-ish for me.

And it might catch me watching "Hercules".
crazy.gif
"Ah, me? Watch Hurcules? No, no, never!"
tongue.gif


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"The Bible is a book: it is a good book, but is is not the only book" - Inherit the Wind

"I do not believe that the same God who
has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."—Galileo

hypatia@b5fan.b5lr.com
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

On to a more productive follow-up question:

Would a lot of letter writing help at ALL? It doesn't take much time or money to type, print, and send a letter to one or even more people at Sci-Fi.

If the ratings were close to what were wanted for a series, and a bunch of letters came flooding in, would it help?

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"The Bible is a book: it is a good book, but is is not the only book" - Inherit the Wind

"I do not believe that the same God who
has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."—Galileo

hypatia@b5fan.b5lr.com
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

After you see the movie, write to Sci-Fi. I plan to do it.

Tammy

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"We're in here! Can anyone hear us?"
"I hear you." [giggle, laugh]
"In here!"
"We are here." [giggle, laugh]
-- Londo and G'Kar in Babylon 5:"Convictions"

Tammy's Station
http://community.webtv.net/gkarfan/TammysStation
 
Re: If you don\'t have a Nielsen box

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by hypatia:
Just to complicate this some more, I saw some kind of news item years ago about how Nielson might try to improve its data. They had some kind of monitor, a motion detector maybe, and were trying to see if they could measure when someone is actually in the room watching the tv.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This might (or might not) have been a thing now called the "Portable People Meter", which was developed by Arbitron and is being tested and (probably) eventually deployed with help from Nielsen Media Research.

PPM Information, for anybody who's interested and bored enough to read through this stuff...


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-- Marty
"Always do what you're good at," they tell me.
So I go around annoying people.
 
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