I like television a lot. I realize this should be sort of an embarrassing confession for someone who has aspirations of appearing deep, intelligent, or very religious but its true. And I am a relatively intelligent person of faith. I should say that: first off, with work, and a three year old little boy, I’m pretty busy, so while my television is often on, I don’t pay super close attention all the time. Secondly, while I enjoy TV, I’m not indiscriminate about what I watch. I have often been appalled by the A- moral, even hedonistic messages presented on television, so I was pleased to receive a packet from the people at the Nielsen ratings group asking me to participate in the ratings polling this fall. This is something I’ve never done before.
Now I have to say that were it not an opportunity to put in my two cents regarding what is or should be on television, I would certainly not go to the trouble of participating. I don’t actually watch much network TV. I watch a lot of cable news, (Fox in particular), ESPN, the History Channel and the Travel Channel. Of course the boy watches Nick and Nick Jr. I had always assumed that the ratings groups simply monitored what their control groups watched for a week and assembled the results into a report of some kind. It had never really donned on me to question how they monitored my viewing.
Seems like kind of a stupid assumption now that I know otherwise. In actuality there is a fairly detailed log for selected viewers to fill out. It runs day-by-day, evening-by-evening for a whole week. The participant enters the names of the times, programs and channels he watches, as well as the number of people watching with him and their ages. Frankly the whole thing is a bit intrusive but it gives the viewer an opportunity to express an opinion to a venue that actually matters.
In spite of the fact that completing the logbook is a little too much like homework I plan to my best to complete the survey. It seems like a more reasonable approach to influencing the networks as well as the cable and satellite providers than boycotts and angry letters of protest. I would encourage anyone else on Nielsen’s list this fall, to participate as well. At least this way you know someone’s listening to your opinions. For more information on Nielsen and how they gather viewer response, try visiting their web site at http://en-us.nielsen.com/content/nielsen/en_us/industries/media.html.