The Rating Game

I think we all have a person in our lives who hangs onto things for too long. It could be the people I talked about a couple weeks ago who refuse to get rid of their typewriters or it could be that friend who has had the exact same haircut for as long as you have known them. No matter how much you try to subtly suggest or outright demand they make a switch, they insist on keeping things just the way they are. (I'm all for traditions, but continuing to watch movies on BETA isn't a tradition, it's a mistake.) Now, as frustrating as that situation can be, dealing with someone who is set in their ways can be preferable to the people who finally agree to make a change, only to make the wrong change. In some ways, this is much worse because now you feel responsible for this poor life decision since you were the one who insisted they ditch the product which had been working for them all along. It would be like convincing your friend to take the plunge and finally get an MP3 player, then having to pretend you are excited while they show off their new Zune - you simply don't have the heart to tell them they missed the point. This is how I feel about the announcement of a new Nielsen ratings system.

It is no secret that I think there are major flaws in the current way TV networks measure ratings. The idea of one household in 25,000 being an accurate measurement for entire regions of the country is so outdated it is both laughable and sad. This system was developed before people had multiple TVs in their homes and 800 channels to flip through, so expecting it to still work was ludicrous. For example, today you can have 1 person watching TV while 2 other people are watching different shows on their computers. But while the reality is that 3 different shows are on in 3 different rooms, there is only a ratings box on the TV, which means this system doesn't even paint an accurate picture of the ratings for the house it is in. Clearly, these networks needed to update the way they measure what people were watching. You would think, given how plugged in people are at all times and willing to share their personal data at the drop of a hat, a more accurate system would have been easy to come up with. But, what Nielsen did was to partner up with Twitter to create what they are calling "Social Ratings". The new program will see what people are talking about on the social media site and then use that to better estimate what programs people are watching. I'm not sure if I should congratulate Nielsen on coming up with an even less accurate system than the one they currently have.

I can only assume these programmers don't actually know how the internet works. Snarky comments on the internet appear to be at an all-time high and no where is that more apparent than on Twitter. I love to read Tweets to see what people are talking about, but even Twitter's most ardent defenders will tell you that just because something is trending, that doesn't mean people are fans of it. If a person is the topic of conversation there is an above average chance they have either died, been fired or just did something very embarrassing. You almost never see the name of a show trending and discover it is just people telling you how much they enjoy the show. Actually, if you are going by reaction on Twitter most of the time it would feel like people are watching certain shows just so they can have fresh material to make fun of it later. So unless this program has a way to interpret sarcasm, it will start reporting that "Whitney" is the highest-rated show in history. Also, I wonder what this will do to shows whose fans aren't exactly tech-savvy. It's a little like how the safe, sensitive-looking guy always wins "American Idol" because the only people voting are 13 year-old girls. This would definitely tip the scales to shows with younger viewers. All I'm saying is that if "NCIS" suddenly plummets in the ratings I don't think it will be because people suddenly decided they had enough of Navy-themed crime.

So, they didn't get the program right. Still, I appreciate Nielsen's effort to come into the next century. Given all the options people have to watch shows on their phones or whenever else they want, it makes sense to try and use new technology to measure viewers. What I think they should be focusing on instead of the number of people watching shows live is the program's DVR activity and not just which shows are being recorded. There should be a simple way to let networks know which shows are actually being watched because that will let you know what shows people are truly loyal to. Lots of people record shows and then never get around to watching them for one reason or another. But, if you really enjoy a show you will find a way to carve an hour out of your night to catch up on the latest episode. To me that type of commitment to a show is a much better barometer than just recording what TVs are tuned to which channels, because for all the recorder knows the person with the remote in their hand simply couldn't find anything else to watch or fell asleep due to lack of entertainment. It would be a real shame if going forward terrible shows were allowed to stay on the air for multiple seasons as a result of boring their viewers into submission, because I'm pretty sure this is how "According to Jim" was allowed to last as long as it did.