the owl and the olive tree

I have no idea if people beside the Nielsen families get counted in any way or not. However i don't think i'd have much respect for someone who said "I don't particularly like the show but it's important that it should be watched by lots of people for reason X. But since only the Nielson families get counted they should watch it for me while i go do something else more interesting."

A little like the people who have opinions about politics but don't actually vote because "one vote doesn't make a difference." (Though obviously it's a far less serious issue in this case.)

From:

You have to be a Nielson household. Nielson very carefully maintains a representative sample of households--if data were gathered through, say, DVR recordings, it would not be representative of America-at-large, but only people who can afford a DVR.

DVR recordings and Internet data may supplement networks' decisions, but ratings data still comes from the Nielson system. So yes, people who think they're improving ratings by watching it are mistaken.

From:

triath.livejournal.com

Good question!

Has anyone ever known anyone as a Nielsen house?

From:

Thank you! Very helpful.

From:

I knew someone online who was, but never in real life. (She thought it was kind of a pain in the neck.)

From:

Those two are not the same situation. This is like someone who isn't eligible to vote (say, a foreign person without citizenship or a felon) saying that they're going to fill out the ballot at home anyway because it's important to vote.

From:

The whole concept that one should watch something one dislikes for some kind of greater good is so alien to me that I can't even think of a way to address the rest of your statement, so I think I'm not even going to try. :)

From:

Ha.

Again, thank you for your media background skillz.

From:

NP! Those degrees in media/film studies are good for somethin', eh?

(Actually, I think my social science education is more relevant in this case... Nielson is a great example of sampling done well.)

From:

I can understand the "I'm going to trust Joss that it's going to get better" argument, but that's probably the only one. And I only understand that for awhile...

For example, Lucas and I watched the first 2-3 episodes of The Riches, because anything with Eddie Izzard as the front man must be awesome, right? But it was just really depressing, and after 2-3 weeks of that, I was tired of trusting Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver to make something awesome, because clearly the writers wanted to make something depressing.

From:

You're right, I overspoke. I think "I'm waiting for it to get better" (and/or "I'm waiting to see whether he's going to do something new with this material") makes a certain amount of sense, although I generally don't bother (if it gets better, someone will tell me).

And some people do actually enjoy it, of course, but I'm not talking about them at all.

It's just the "I owe it to Joss to boost his ratings (and it doesn't much matter whether I like it or not)" that doesn't make any sense at all to me. I mean, heaven forbid I should act like I have a right to tell them what to watch and why -- people are welcome to watch it for any reason at all, including "I really like the Doritos ads that run during it"! It just doesn't make sense to me.

From:

makes a certain amount of sense, although I generally don't bother (if it gets better, someone will tell me).

I can dig it. I'm one of those people where, if I've been looking forward to a show and it's a little disappointing, I'll keep watching to see if it gets better (again, only so long) because if it gets better, I don't want to have missed any of the story. I think how long I'm willing to give it is proportional to how much I was looking forward to the show... and inversely proportional to how disappointing it is. I was actually really looking forward to The Riches (there were posters for it all over NYC and NJ transit leading up to its premiere), but it was really depressing.

From:

I can't believe the awkward/bad grammar nature of this comment. I need a vacation.

From:

Note the part where i said "A little like". I'm not trying to claim a one to one correspondence. It's the attitude of "i think things need to change, but i'm too lazy to do anything about it myself."

From:

No, it's the attitude of "I think things need to change, so I'm going to do something symbolic that changes nothing."

People who want a show to stay on the air can write to the network or create fan sites to try to turn it into a cult phenomenon or something... these things actually have a snowball's chance in hell of affecting the outcome. Watching it does not.

From:

I don't actually have strong feelings about that one way or the other.

(The general concept of doing things one dislikes for the greater good of something or other is pretty well established, whether one feels it ought to be applied to TV is probably best left as a personal decision.)

I'm just saying i don't really hold with "someone _else_ ought to do something they dislike for _my_ greater good."

If they think it's worth suffering through for some reason by those who are going to be counted, they ought to be suffering through it themselves before they try to convince the Nielson people that they ought to join in on the suffer-fest.

From:

Do you think that creating fan sites and writing letters would make a difference if no one was actually watching the show?

I really don't know about the technology involved but i have a suspicion that if X-thousand fans delegated the task of watching the show to the X-fans that had Nielson sets and never actually watched the show themselves that the the network would figure it out one way or another. (And from what some others have been saying it seems like there may in fact be technology in place to do that.)

There's certainly _more_ one can do to support a show than just watching it, but i think that watching it is a bare minimum requirement.

From:

Well, I wasn't saying that it was fair to go find Nielson families and tell them, "You'd better watch this thing that I'm not watching in order to increase its rating!"

It's that I don't think that watching it will do anything if you're not a Nielson family and you're not enjoying it.

That last bit is important. Watching it and talking about it and enjoying it can make a difference even if you're not in the sample set -- becuase you'll say, "Dude, did you see Dollhouse last night? It was awesome! Blah blah blah blah." And maybe someone you talk to goes and watches it and enjoys it, and does the same, and so on, and eventually it does reach the ears of some reasonable percentage of Nielson households. And the ratings go up. Word-of-mouth really does work.

But this doesn't work if what you say is, "Dude, did you see Dollhouse last night? ...It was actually kinda boring, but I'm still watching it for Joss!" That's not going to convince anyone but other dyed-in-the-wool Joss fans to watch it. So in that case, watching it does absolutely nothing unless you happen to be a Nielson subject yourself. It's not that it's morally good or bad - it's that it's totally ineffective.

It's not that I think that Joss fans should be hunting down Nielson households and, I dunno, bribing them to watch the thing so that they don't have to. It's just that their chosen method does not look to be effective in any way. I don't honestly care whether it's morally higher ground. It's just not effective.

That's all.

From:

Do you think that creating fan sites and writing letters would make a difference if no one was actually watching the show?

I acknowledge that these activities involve watching the show. My point is that merely watching the show, saying "I'm going to watch the show so that its ratings improve," does not work.

When the evidence is contradictory, Nielson ratings win. If the Nielson ratings are good, but DVR and Internet numbers aren't so good, execs will say, "Clearly the show is working... what can we do to boost DVR and Internet hits? We must not be promoting these venues enough." If the Nielson ratings are crap, it would take a LOT of people watching on the internet to save it. In fact, that still wouldn't save it, because they would start to wonder why they're bothering to pay to broadcast it when all their viewers are watching it online.

From:

This.

From:

Yeah, it's certainly not directly effective.

The one circumstance where it will matter is if one presumes that there is a representation of like-minded fans amongst Nielson families.

If the community says "we don't like it but we're watching it to support Joss," then presumably the Nielson proportion of that community will participate. If the community says "we want to support Joss, but we don't actually want to have to watch the show. Anyone who's part of a Nielson family should keep watching it for the cause, but the rest of us are taking the night off," then the proportion of the community that _do_ matter is quite likely to say "screw you guys! I'm going home too!" (Or out to a club, or whatever =)

What they're doing _is_ a word of mouth campaign. It's not a _great_ word of mouth campaign like one might get from people who actually like the show, but like a positive word of mouth campaign the results will depend on the enthusiasm of the people supporting it (although i think even the best possible results from this kind of campaign aren't going to be good enough.)

The ratings are determined by how many people watch it. The number of people is determined by sampling. The people who want to support the show could try to subvert the system by coercing Nielson people to watch it when they themselves are not, but we both agree that's not a great idea, and not only would it be morally suspect it probably wouldn't work anyways.

In regards to the issue we're talking about (as opposed to the more advanced kinds of support maggiedacatt suggested,) the "fans" of the show have two options, don't watch it, or watch it. Watching it and talking about it, even in the apathetic way they are, strengthens the community and this strengthens the resolve of any dyed-in-the-wool Joss fans who are part of Nielson families. If the community as a whole gives up than the members who are also part of Nielson families will give up too.

That's why i think of it as being at least similar to voting. The direct impact of my vote is minuscule, but the aggregate of my vote along with everyone else who believes the same as i do is very important. Think of it like electing a congress-critter whose vote does have a noticeable and significant impact. If their electorate can't summon up the energy to care about a particular issue the congress-critter isn't going to care either.

And i agree, the best they can do with the "watching it just for Joss" attitude is keep viewership up amongst the dyed-in-the-wool Joss supporters. But it's the best they can hope to accomplish, and if they think it's worth doing... *shrugs*

From:

You know, i could probably just some up that last post as "It seems to me that you're viewing it as a binary mathematical function, while i feel it needs to be viewed as an analog function of group psychology." :)

From:

Well, it seems to me to be more a 'cult of personality' thing. And that's why I'm going to stop discussing, because I perceive much cult-of-personality stuff as irrational, and it's not worth my time to bang my head against it.

From:

ceph.livejournal.com

So the theory is that Nielsen families won't watch without the moral support of other fans, who are watching the show and posting "yeah, it sucks, but we want you Nielsen folks to watch it so we're going to grit our teeth and watch it too." I suppose I can see the argument there, although it seems like the effect would be pretty small.

However, I still think your voting analogy is not analogous enough to be useful. Every vote is (ideally, at least) recorded and counted. Voting is not primarily a psychological/sociological phenomenon. If your point is merely that everybody has to do their bit to keep up morale among the troops, the compare it to campaigning or holding protests or something else that's less cut-and-dried.

From: