Nielsen to Track Your DVR Use

December 22nd, 2005

Nielsen, widely known for its TV viewership system, will begin to track DVR trends. Nielsen plans to assess three aspects of DVR use:

…a live rating that measures the number of viewers who watch a program at its scheduled time; another that takes into account viewers who watch a program live or on the same day of the initial showing; and a third that adds up those who watched a show live or within a week of its first airing.

Nielsen will initially have 60 boxes in place to track use, and plans to incrementally grow that at a 100 a month.

If you didn’t know, Nielsen approaches a family, plants a box in the house, and in return the participants recieve some sort of reward or incentive. Nielsen ratings have often been a point of debate, as they only take a sampling of the country and represent it as the whole. Americans have on occasion seen shows cancelled, but only to reemerge due to massive DVD sales (i.e. Family Guy, but that may have initially gotten pulled because its distributor, Fox, is owned by a sometimes anal rententive man). Nonetheless, Nielsen is due to be outwitted. It is suprising that Tivo, which already sells is user’s DVR habits to third party companies, has not begun to report on this type of data in the same authoritative manner as Nielsen. Then again, never deviating from your core business is a good thing.

Pic courtesy of Dennishensley

Entry Filed under: Wacky