Changing Channels Increases Show's Ratings?

[KingDavid8]

I found this on a message board, regarding the show "Drive" (suggestions on how to improve its ratings during the airing of the final two episodes, hopefully leading Fox to pick it back up):

Ratings are based on 5 minutes of staying on the same channel. so if you change the channel on a commercial and turn right back onto fox, each person that does that will give them 4 rating points per person. hence, if 1 million people watch the show and change the channel back and forth on commercials, thats 4 million ratings.

Any truth?

David

How the hell do they expect Fox to know what the average viewer is doing in their home, they don't count each individual TV.

[Algae]

I doubt it. According to How Stuff Works, ratings aren't done by every TV set in the country, only people that are Nielsen Families who either have a box or a diary that they log their TV watching into.

Nielsen uses a technique called statistical sampling to rate the shows -- the same technique that pollsters use to predict the outcome of elections. Nielsen creates a "sample audience" and then counts how many in that audience view each program. Nielsen then extrapolates from the sample and estimates the number of viewers in the entire population watching the show. That's a simple way of explaining what is a complicated, extensive process. Nielsen relies mainly on information collected from TV set meters that it installs, and then combines this information with huge databases of the programs that appear on each TV station and cable channel.

[Cervus]

I was a Neilsen household last year. They sent me a diary and it was just up to me to write down whatever I watched and mail the diary back to them. No meters or satellite monitoring of my TV. The diary went by 15-minute increments.

[snoozn]

Cervus,
Did you ever cheat and write down stuff you liked but didn't watch for some reason or not write down stuff that you did watch but didn't like? I must be a bad person, because I'm pretty sure I'd cheat if I were ever a Nielson household. Maybe that's why they haven't asked me.

snoozn

[Cervus]

Um...no comment.

[Artemis]

Originally Posted by snoozn

Cervus,
Did you ever cheat and write down stuff you liked but didn't watch for some reason or not write down stuff that you did watch but didn't like? I must be a bad person, because I'm pretty sure I'd cheat if I were ever a Nielson household. Maybe that's why they haven't asked me.

snoozn

I remember reading a message board post last year (forget which board, but I don't know if it was this one), where a poster asked for suggestions about what to say they'd been watching. That is, if other posters wanted "House" to look more popular, he/she would fill in "House" as one of the shows they'd watched.