I believe it is light years better than what we currently have. Conclusive analysis of statistical samples was great when it was impossible to register the audience population as a whole, or on a continual basis. Throw in "sweeps" programming" and the true picture gets distorted even further. But had this been the end of the discussion I'd agree that this approach is better -- but not tremendously so.
However, we live in an age where video consumption is migrating at ever increasing rates from the home TV screen to the PC in all its glorious forms including house-bound desktops and portable laptops, to the skyrocketing popularity of tablets like the iPad (with literally hundreds of more choices to come) and the equally burgeoning mobile access via smartphones. In fact, for the 1st time in 20 yrs the percentage of television ownership dropped. Blame digital conversion and new devices (http://ow.ly/4MiFj) . As for teenage girls driving social media results? Social media use continues to grow with adults.56% of Twitter users, for example, are in the 30-54 year old target demo. There's an old adage in politics that says people vote with their feet.Working in social media for many years I often say that online, people vote with their clicks, deciding where and on what to spend their limited resource of time. It follows that they would do so on things they find of interest, and that interest should be included in determining public sentiment and popularity of any medium -- TV included. And so any broadcast medium measurement that includes, in a significant way, digital viewer ship and just as importantly, digital public sentiment, is better than one that does not. No, it's not perfect, but I think we can agree it's a move in the right direction (and, I'd add, long overdue). Ron Casalotti Wayne, NJ On May 30, 8:33 pm, PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 5:12 PM, Tom Wolper <twol...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I'll second what Joe said. This is about cracking open the model and > > letting the light in. If the execution turns out to be faulty, then > > fix the execution, just don't drop the project and go back to legacy > > Nielsens. > > True - but I am not sure it is true that anything is better than what we > currently have. I can imagine systems that would be substantially worse, and > one of those might be a system that depends on how much 15 year old girls > tweet about their favorite shows. As one of the people quoted in the article > notes, we would likely get even fewer innovative, risky or creative > programming that we currently have if ad buys become dependent on this kind > of measure. My 13 year old son is just devouring Sportsnight with me on > Netflix - and last night he noticed that there were only two seasons (we are > about 1/3 of the way through season 2). He had the same emotional reaction > that most of us had when it unfolded in real time. But had ad buys been > based on watercooler talk of high school girls based on a brief summary of > the pilot, I doubt we would have had even two episodes of Sportsnight, much > less two seasons. > > Like I said, there are good elements of this approach, and I hope they > continue to develop those. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
