Sampling theory. Next week there will be another 10,000+ households watching what they watch.
They’re sample at twice the frequency? ;)
Question: How many people alter their viewing habits when they know they’re being monitored? (“Oooh, let’s watch some High Quality British Import on PBS this time, it will reflect well on us.”)
There was actually a lot of debate about that back in the day. The big three (NBC, CBS, ABC) used to argue that respondents were fudging their diary entries because there was no way that people were watching that much PBS.
I believe it, but I won’t alter my habits at all. The only thing I’m changing is my favorite shows’ DVR settings to “first run and repeats” from “first run” so that they’ll get credit during the summer season.
We’ve been a Nielsen family for 6 months, each tv set has:
A sensor over a power coil in the back to detect it turning on
A microphone over a speaker
An external LED display that displays time/person logged in
A remote that changes user and sets holiday mode
Other than logging in and out of the device by pressing a single button, the whole process requires no user interaction and is pretty seamless.
My roommates and I did Neilsen for a week or two when we were in college. They called us out of the blue. We put down the Ben Stiller show every time it was on, but they canceled it anyway. Our sense of tremendous power was short lived.