Nielsen ratings are a total crock

[SeattleFightFan]

I posted this in another thread, and thought i'd see if anyone cares with it's own thread.

Nielson rankings have 2 measurements. a) they put a box in someone's home which monitors the TV, and b) folks fill out a week long 'diary' of what they watched, how long, why, etc.

seriously. that's it. although satellite would have a tough time doing it, I cannot believe that someone like Comcast doesn't have a real-time monitoring system to determine who's watching what.

why does this matter? how many people under 30 do you know who would volunteer to fill out a weekly diary? how many 19 year olds do you know who would volunteer to wait around for a Nielson person to come by and install a little 'spy box'. i'm pretty sure these are unpaid volunteers (my grandparents did it a few years ago and they were not paid).

the first time they ever did polling for a Presidential election (the nineteen teens i think), one candidate won handily in the polling and lost the election. why? they did their polling by telephone, and only rich people had phones!!! they teach this in many statistics classes, as an example of how NOT to create illegitimate statistical representations.

isn't Nielson the same thing? how representative can it be when only certain demographics (older, willing to volunteer, stay at home nights, whatever) are willing to participate?

if my facts or assumptions are wrong, i'd like it to be pointed out.

Sources:
Nielsen ratings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nielsen | Television

caveat: is this "ammunition" for when the ratings come out next week, to prove some point about SF v UFC? nope; just something i was thinking about this morning and did a little research to come to my conclusion.

[tmonty444]

Nice post. I always thought the statistics on the ratings were skewed. It's like if five buddys come over to my house tonight to watch the fights, then the ratings only get acredited for one viewer ? What a flawed system

[miamiron]

Are you senile???

This is a fighting forum???

[SeattleFightFan]

Originally Posted by tmonty444

Nice post. I always thought the statistics on the ratings were skewed. It's like if five buddys come over to my house tonight to watch the fights, then the ratings only get acredited for one viewer ? What a flawed system

worse than that, was my point; it's only counted if that person has a Nielson box in their house, or the homeowner does a diary. and what type of person does that? certainly not the type that has 5 dudes over for beer, pizza, jaeger shots and fights

[miamiron]

a LOT OF FREE TIME???

[agm222]

Originally Posted by SeattleFightFan

I posted this in another thread, and thought i'd see if anyone cares with it's own thread.

Nielson rankings have 2 measurements. a) they put a box in someone's home which monitors the TV, and b) folks fill out a week long 'diary' of what they watched, how long, why, etc.

seriously. that's it. although satellite would have a tough time doing it, I cannot believe that someone like Comcast doesn't have a real-time monitoring system to determine who's watching what.

why does this matter? how many people under 30 do you know who would volunteer to fill out a weekly diary? how many 19 year olds do you know who would volunteer to wait around for a Nielson person to come by and install a little 'spy box'. i'm pretty sure these are unpaid volunteers (my grandparents did it a few years ago and they were not paid).

the first time they ever did polling for a Presidential election (the nineteen teens i think), one candidate won handily in the polling and lost the election. why? they did their polling by telephone, and only rich people had phones!!! they teach this in many statistics classes, as an example of how NOT to create illegitimate statistical representations.

isn't Nielson the same thing? how representative can it be when only certain demographics (older, willing to volunteer, stay at home nights, whatever) are willing to participate?

if my facts or assumptions are wrong, i'd like it to be pointed out.

Sources:
Nielsen ratings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nielsen | Television

caveat: is this "ammunition" for when the ratings come out next week, to prove some point about SF v UFC? nope; just something i was thinking about this morning and did a little research to come to my conclusion.

Hate to sound like a rep from Nielsen but both posts seem a little misinformed so I thought I'd clarify for those who may wonder how it works. Nielsen randomly picks families/households to participate in their program as a part of a sample population. They installed a box in our house and we just press one button to log in. I've never heard of the diary method but that sounds completely outdated.

You aren't an unpaid volunteer, and the information is very valuable. Cable/satellite companies can't track it and release or use the information because I believe it's a breach of our privacy, and it requires us to sign off on it. They gave each member of my household a $100 bill to accept, and since then have been giving around $20-25 a month which we just personally put towards our cable bill.

Originally Posted by tmonty444

Nice post. I always thought the statistics on the ratings were skewed. It's like if five buddys come over to my house tonight to watch the fights, then the ratings only get acredited for one viewer ? What a flawed system

No, you log in your friends too. You have to put in their age/gender... I did it for the World Series last week. No polling system is perfect, but the most efficient method involves sampling populations.

[SeattleFightFan]

Originally Posted by agm222

Hate to sound like a rep from Nielsen but both posts seem a little misinformed so I thought I'd clarify for those who may wonder how it works. Nielsen randomly picks families/households to participate in their program as a part of a sample population. They installed a box in our house and we just press one button to log in. I've never heard of the diary method but that sounds completely outdated.

You aren't an unpaid volunteer, and the information is very valuable. Cable/satellite companies can't track it and release or use the information because I believe it's a breach of our privacy, and it requires us to sign off on it. They gave each member of my household a $100 bill to accept, and since then have been giving around $20-25 a month which we just personally put towards our cable bill.



No, you log in your friends too. You have to put in their age/gender... I did it for the World Series last week. No polling system is perfect, but the most efficient method involves sampling populations.

thank you. i was hoping someone who had done it would say something.

[nyNinja]

Reminds me of the polls before the election. All the polls showed Obama with a big lead, but then when the election finally happened, oh wait, the polls were right.

[iowapoet_29]

I really don't care who's watching what.

[Brandon85]

In addition to AGM's post, I'd like to point out a couple of other things.

MKT research is conducted a lot differently than it was in the 19 teens. Markets are segmented, and they try to get an accurate sample for each segment. Segments can be based on anything: ethnicity, age, sex, income, geographic location, etc.

I don't know this to be fact, but I would assume that Nielson identifies segments a variety of ways. Once segments are identified, they get X number of people (households) from each segment randomly. This is called quota sampling (they have different demographics, and randomly fill their needed quota of each demographic) They use a mathematical equation to figure out how many people they need to sample in order to figure out how to be inside of a predetermined acceptable margin of error.

Basically, they sample a very large number of people within each specified demographic in order to make assumptions for everyone.

Source: my completed marking degree, and statistics/mathematics degree in progress