Steamrolling Nielsen

"BWAHAHAHAHA. Nielsen’s clients continue to rebel against the company’s incompetence. Steamrolling ahead with new audience measurement tactics that it’s clearly not ready for, Nielsen yesterday announced to customers it would use its “live” national sample of TV audiences to test its online viewership initiative, which hopes to measure how many people are watching TV shows on their computers. It’s all apart of their ambitious (and DOA) A2/M2, or “anytime/anywhere,” initiative.

Nielsen has only signed up 375 households, within their 14,000 national sample, to participate in both panels; privacy concerns have kept most households from allowing the company to monitor both mediums. And Nielsen’s big bucks clients don’t like where this is headed.

So not only will Nielsen continue to have trouble delivering its TV ratings data on time, but the already suspect numbers will be even more flawed."



"Bonanza originally aired on Saturday nights beginning the year I was born, 1959. While its rival CBS series had managed to garner good ratings on that particular evening, Bonanza never found its audience. NBC slated it for cancellation, but it received one last chance: a move to Sunday nights.

It was just what the show needed. Ratings skyrocketed, and Bonanza won the yearly ratings crown from 1964 through 1967 as the most popular show in the country."