Core77

Nielsen's rating box is ugly, and difficult to use (or we're just idiots)

By Rain Noe - April 30, 2009

in Object Culture

Have you ever wondered how the Nielsen Company compiles their TV ratings? That's right, by giving people the fugly People Meter above to record their viewing habits.

If the set-top box looks dated, that's because it is--it dates back to 1987. Yet as simple as it looks to operate, a recently Nielsen probe found that "people [are] not pushing the buttons properly," which has been setting TV ratings off by an estimated 8%.

So while people first thought TV ratings were down because we were all on the internet, now we know ratings are down because we're too dumb to push buttons properly. Man--are advertisers sure they want to reach us?

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riothero

15 years ago

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Why can't they just pay certain cable providers to measure bandwidth use of specific channels at certain times?
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Joel

15 years ago

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"Man--are advertisers sure they want to reach us?"

My guess is that if you gave advertisers the choice between paying $10 to reach 1000 smart people or $1000 to reach 10 idiots, they'd pay fork over the 1K every time.
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