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On Why Nielsen Ratings Are Inaccurate, and Why They'll Stay That Way
@serus I work far a company that provides Cable TV services. The topic of Ala-cart TV has came up but what subscribers/customers don't understand is that to have ala-cart options, you would probably be spending more money to have access to 10-20 channels than to have a bundle of channels. If Cable companies were forced to do this, the amount you would pay for say 20 channels would be more than the price of 70 channels or even a digital service of 100+ channels. A majority of cable companies don't make any money on customers who take the lowest package of channels. For example, a basic package of 20 channels or a Expanded basic package of 70 channels. Those packages by themselves don't make a profit for companies if that's the only service that the customer pays for.
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On Why Nielsen Ratings Are Inaccurate, and Why They'll Stay That Way
@HernandezBobby I agree with you. This is a flawed system. Who knows how their demographics are distributed. Take a Sci-Fi show as an example. Of the 25,000 people being tested. Maybe a few hundred watch a particular show. In terms of science fiction fans, you jump outside that 25,000 people and multiple more millions of fans of a show aren't accounted for if they watch the program live. So a show that they rate as a 1.1 million viewers could easily be at 5.0 millions viewers or higher. So when the show gets canceled, they are upsetting more fans than they realize.
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On Why Nielsen Ratings Are Inaccurate, and Why They'll Stay That Way
I've always felt that the Nielsen ratings were inaccurate depending or the viewers demographic that the show was targeting. For example, Science Fiction and comedy shows tend to have a younger demographic and the viewers tend to watch their shows more from the DVR, online and other sources. For example, SyFy has recently canceled 2 popular series due to "low" Nielsen ratings. SGU and Caprica. My theory is that if you take the shows rating and multiply it by 3, you will get a more accurate reading of total viewer-ship of the show. For example, Family Guy was canceled but was picked back up due to DVD sales. So if SyFy wan't to know SGU's true rating. Take the 1.1 by Nielsen, multiply by 3, and you will have a rating of more like 3.3. With that rating, SGU would be on to Season 3.
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On Why Nielsen Ratings Are Inaccurate, and Why They'll Stay That Way
@riggssm Cable channels now days have the same commercial time as Broadcast channels. You are probably referring to Premium Cable Channels like HBO, Stars, Cinemax, and Showtime. Those channels haven't changed at all as far as commercial time. The Satellite a Cable providers help generate new networks that can be accessed for viewing but still need to operate like broadcast television networks.