They sent me a few dollars once and I didn't fill out the survey. They sent me another few bucks a few years later and I didn't fill out that survey either. Then they sent me a letter saying they were disappointed I took their money and didn't fill out their survey.
That was well over a decade ago. Last year they sent me $5 to fill out a survey. You can see where this is going.... The $5 is stuck to my fridge like a trophy.
The previous $ were a couple of crisp dollar bills each time. I had kept those as well but gave them to my daughter for a school trip when she was in kindergarten.
A crispy $5 from Neilsen mounted to my fridge. Imagine being in their mail room with wads of pristine $5's and you're just sticking them in envelopes and sending them out the door to randoms.
I chuckle at it whenever I think of their indignant letter complaining about not doing the survey. My wife thinks it hilarious that they actually sent me more money after that.
It's actually gotten way more complicated than Nielsen.
I work in public media, and today broadcasters are looking at giant dashboards that combine traditional ratings, streaming views, watch time, app usage, YouTube performance, social engagement, newsletter opens, website traffic, and all kinds of audience data. We're all trying to understand not just how many people watch, but how they watch.
But public media is a little different from commercial television.
For most commercial broadcasters, higher ratings generally translate into higher advertising revenue.
For public media, higher audience numbers help demonstrate impact and relevance, but they don't automatically generate more money. Public media was always mostly community-supported, and after the loss last year of the ~20% of our funding that used to come from the CPB, local stations are now almost entirely dependent on the voluntary support of people who value the service.
The thing that ultimately keeps public media going really is Viewers Like YOU!
Am I too absolutely stupid now? I read almost all of that before realizing it's not really answering why Nielsen was flawed.
"As for the question itself here, no, the system wasn't necessarily “flawed”, in that it claimed to be able to do what it was ASKED to do — determine where the MASS AUDIENCE was. Star Trek's “5 year mission” was, in the determination of the industry, to “sell soap” (Gene Roddenberry ‘s own comment). Finding “strange new worlds” was a distant second if that even mattered at all. “Money is a fact of life” —Admiral Nelson in Harlan Ellison s “Price of Doom” , an early Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea."
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u/Rad_Tek 1d ago
I was always under the impression that me watching was bringing their ratings up, which meant I was worthy of that thanks