Most DVRs receive a signal 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless if anyone is watching it or not.

Yep. The DVR has no way of knowing whether or not your TV is actually on or not.

Tivo actually keeps track of when you are watching "live" by monitoring if you've hit anything on the remote in the last 15 minutes or so. Not 100% accurate, but it's something.

All the more reason not to use Tivo due to the fact that it reports home about what you're doing.

So, how much is a monthly subscription to The Spice Channel?

Chris

From an ACNielsen brochure in the section labeled "What's in it for you?":
The information you send to us will "speak" for thousands of consumers across the U.S. You'll earn valuable gift points for transmitting you important information each week. These gift points can be redeemed for exciting gifts from our Gift Catalog. And, best of all, you will be eligible for special "members only" sweepstakes!
So it's kind of like selling GRIT.

You can opt out.

Whatever. I have nothing to hide, and would gladly volunteer all of my personal tv watching data to Nielsen or anyone else. Who gives a flying fart if someone knows what I watch. Maybe it will *gasp* help the shows I like stay on the air.

You can keep your tinfoil hat.

I'm with you. Some things I want private, others I could care less about. If them knowing I DVR arrested development helps keep it on the air, fine. I'll speak for the thousands of tin foil hat owners.

Chris

Yeah, I guess you would only need to worry about Big Brother knowing your viewing habits if you watch Al-Jazeera all day.

I agree. They can have black helicopters hovering above my house to monitor my Samsung if it'll save Arrested Development.

This will definately make a difference for some shows. At Tivo.com, they have The Office (US version) in the top 20 most watched list. Of course, it's done not-so-great in the regular ratings. I'm also interested to see what this might mean for AD.

I too would willing submit my viewing to Nielsen, or others... But apparently they have to choose you as being one of their special children...

My wife got a phone call last night and we were choosen. Should be interesting.

Dang newfangled black box! When I was a Nielsen rater back in the 80s, I had a little "viewing diary" I had to write in. That method allowed for watching VHS tapes of shows from the previous day.

I guess I'll never be chosen. We never answer tele-marketing calls.

Actually they still use the diaries. The 9000 people with wired homes are how they get the overnight ratings. Eventually they go back and recalculate the ratings based off the booklets also from my understanding. I have never found their ratings to be accurate. I was bored one day at work and sent an email to all of the employees asking what shows they watched that week. It was amazing to see how many people didnt watch any of the shows that were the highest rated.

Even with including DVR's they will always be off on viewers. I can't find the link I used to have but there are multiple other groups they exclude in their data. I know one of them was college dorms.

I got a call last night which the caller ID listed as "Nielsen Ratings." You would not believe how fast I anwered that call.

As the lady said, back in '04 we had told the TiVo that we were interested in allowing our viewing habits to be monitored by Nielsen. I thought that was for aggregate kinda stuff or DVR specific stuff.

According to her, I was not chosen for the initial run, but people had dropped out and they needed more homes. I happily agreed, answered a short telephone survey and they are mailing me some documents to sign and return to them to make it official. Stupid me, I didn't ask whether my data would be used in the actual Nielsen ratings (I assumed at least not the overnight stuff). I'll let you know more when I get my packet. Good thing Arrested Development is already off the air!