BWAH-HA-HA! WE HAD THE POWER!
Yes, it can now be revealed that for the past two years we were a Nielsen Family — our every move on TV (including watching the DVR and the Blu-Ray) being recorded and exerting an influence on TV ratings for the highly critical (to us) demographics we were part of.
We were actually contractually prevented from telling anyone of our Status of Amazing Cultural Influence — unless a visitor was over at our house when the TV was on, in which case we were contractually obligated to tell them (and to record them in the viewer selection box as a guest).
For our trouble we got a small sum of money on a regular basis, and a Great Feeling of Societal Power. (Kay, underage, got to pick prizes from a catalog.)
Unlike the Olden Dayes of Nielsen log books, the current system was actually relatively slick — an octopus of cables in the back of our receiver, with, every input going through to the TV routing through it to note what we were actually viewing at the time (with credit being given to DVR-watched shows, though only within a week or two).
That was tied into an additional box at the top of the TV, which by remote control we would, every 20-odd minutes, note who was watching the TV (if the viewers hadn't changed, we could just hit OK on the remote). If we had guests, we were to enter for each of them their age and gender.
All in all, it wasn't all that bad. Periodically Nielsen would call us up to confirm what TVs and devices plugged into them we had in the house (we were supposed to notify them if it changed, but this way they could catch up). When we got our Chromecast, for example, they came out and plugged it into the Nielsen cabling. The service guy in our area was very nice, and managed to work wonders. The folk we talked with on the phone were also very pleasant and good to work with.
We could have stayed on (we had an offer to extend beyond our two year stint), but the nigh-impossible mares nest of cablng behind the already crowded video boxen above the TV, plus the low-simmer annoyance of keying in who was watching stuff, made it desirable to call it quits, let go of the power, and improve the ventilation around our video equipment.
So if TV suddenly starts going drastically downhill in quality, blame all those other Nielsen families. We're out (and already enjoying the dearth of blinking red lights over the TV).
Yes, and you shared that power with about 36,000 other households nationwide. ::eye roll::
+David Newman Well … um … more influence than the other 117,500,000 households! So there!
🙂 Sorry, I was feeling a bit testy. Yes, of course, you have much more influence than I, who have never been part of a Nielsen household, and who therefore have 0 influence.
YOU got Almost Human cancelled!
This explains a lot of the crap on TV as of late. 😉
+Scott Randel No, we kept them from pulling the plug before the end of the season. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.