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I love snow days. I'm even happy to shove my front walk, that's how much I love snow days! (Note that "my front walk" comprises a dozen steps and less than 150 square feet of pavement.)
So, CGU and I are a Nielsen family this week. Which is kindof exciting and kindof a pain. See, I approach the Nielsen diary like it's a historical document, while he approaches it more like speculative fiction. I carefully fill in all the stuff we've actually watched -- the 45 minutes from the middle of one movie, followed by a half hour of VH1, followed by an hour from the middle of another movie -- while he's gone in and marked down what we'll watch Tuesday. Except, what he said we'd watch Tuesday, we wound up watching Sunday; fortunately, what he said we'd watch Sunday is also broadcast Tuesday, so we are actually watching these things, in some order that bears no resemblance to what's in the diary.
(Though I really don't mind that he wrote down the show he was planning to watch Saturday and then didn't watch because he was incapacitated by a migraine, because hey, it's a show he watches every week, and he can't help the migraine. And I can even cut him slack for writing in "Enterprise," which we rarely watch, because hey, I want the Star Trek franchise to survive.)
I am thinking, though, that the Nielsen diary is really an outmoded method of tracking television viewing. Because the format makes no allowances at all for channel flipping, which is what many people do now -- certainly it's what we do most of the time. I can think of an easy way to rectify this -- instead of sending out a booklet, send out some gizmo that you attach to the back of your set or your cable box or whatever for a week, which automatically keeps track of what you're watching. I can't think it would be *that* much more expensive than the packet they send out now -- especially since they sent us $5 in cash as an inducement to participate, plus two or three additional letters encouraging our participation.
I can think of a reason why they won't do it that way, though: Because while it might show more accurately how many people are watching what when, it would *also* show people clicking away as soon as a commercial break starts, and that's not useful data when you're trying to sell time to advertisers.
So, CGU and I are a Nielsen family this week. Which is kindof exciting and kindof a pain. See, I approach the Nielsen diary like it's a historical document, while he approaches it more like speculative fiction. I carefully fill in all the stuff we've actually watched -- the 45 minutes from the middle of one movie, followed by a half hour of VH1, followed by an hour from the middle of another movie -- while he's gone in and marked down what we'll watch Tuesday. Except, what he said we'd watch Tuesday, we wound up watching Sunday; fortunately, what he said we'd watch Sunday is also broadcast Tuesday, so we are actually watching these things, in some order that bears no resemblance to what's in the diary.
(Though I really don't mind that he wrote down the show he was planning to watch Saturday and then didn't watch because he was incapacitated by a migraine, because hey, it's a show he watches every week, and he can't help the migraine. And I can even cut him slack for writing in "Enterprise," which we rarely watch, because hey, I want the Star Trek franchise to survive.)
I am thinking, though, that the Nielsen diary is really an outmoded method of tracking television viewing. Because the format makes no allowances at all for channel flipping, which is what many people do now -- certainly it's what we do most of the time. I can think of an easy way to rectify this -- instead of sending out a booklet, send out some gizmo that you attach to the back of your set or your cable box or whatever for a week, which automatically keeps track of what you're watching. I can't think it would be *that* much more expensive than the packet they send out now -- especially since they sent us $5 in cash as an inducement to participate, plus two or three additional letters encouraging our participation.
I can think of a reason why they won't do it that way, though: Because while it might show more accurately how many people are watching what when, it would *also* show people clicking away as soon as a commercial break starts, and that's not useful data when you're trying to sell time to advertisers.