This is something I’ve often wondered about. Turns out sample statistics are taken from participating households and this data is then extrapolated to get an estimated total — similarly to how political popularity polls work.
To find out what people are watching, meters installed in the selected sample of homes track when TV sets are on and what channels they are tuned to. A “black box,” which is just a computer and modem, gathers and sends all this information to the company’s central computer every night. Then by monitoring what is on TV at any given time, the company is able to keep track of how many people watch which program.
Small boxes, placed near the TV sets of those in the national sample, measure who is watching by giving each member of the household a button to turn on and off to show when he or she begins and ends viewing. This information is also collected each night.
The national TV ratings largely rely on these meters. To ensure reasonably accurate results, the company uses audits and quality checks and regularly compares the ratings it gets from different samples and measurement methods.
Well I never. (via howstuffworks)
We had one of those Nielsen boxes (just said ‘yes’ to the guy who came around to the house, since it seemed interesting) when I was younger. You’d clock in to the box with a remote control – each member of the house had a number, and other numbers were used for guests. It’d wish you a happy birthday on your birthday, too, which in 1992 or so was a bit of a novelty.
Got rid of it because, for some reason or another, its dial-in function began to fail, and we’d be woken up by a modem calling our phone at 5AM and the box not picking up.
December 26, 2009 @ 8:48 pm