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Becoming A "Nielsen Family"...


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My neighbor showed this to me today wondering what it was all about. It came to her via the good old U.S. Postal Service...

 

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It's a survey from Nielsen Research asking participation in small questionnaire about where you get your programming from...

 

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They ask name, age range, sex, what you like to watch and how you watch it...

 

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For the time and effort to answer 9 questions they send you 1 crisp new $1dollar bill...

 

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The best part is if you return the survey in it's paid return envelope within 3 weeks...you will get another crisp new FIVE dollar bill as a token of thanks from Nielsen.

 

This usually leads to you becoming a "Nielsen Family Member" where you will be asked to do more surveys...

 

The pay is small...but there are various surveys they may ask you to participate in including radio,TV Internet or whatever else they are doing.

 

 

And for those of you who don't care about being a Nielsen family...

I am adding this neato picture of an old L.A. Airways helicopter landing at Disneyland....before the bad crash in '68.

 

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They called my house about satellite radio. The survey took 20 minutes and I got $5 bucks. I made the mistake of saying other members use it because they kept calling.

 

I was got equipment once for your retail purchases after filling out a form online. It was a scanner system but I promptly sent it back. Didn’t want the commitment of scanning every purchase in.

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Wow, I had no idea they literally mailed cash.

 

I do remember my aunt had a Nielsen diary for a while. I was a kid, so it was the first time I'd ever heard about ratings. What's funny is that she only ever watches Mother Angelica on EWTN over the air.

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I just recently completed one of these. I also completed a survey from them in 2015.

 

It's made me more skeptical about how accurate the ratings really are. It relies entirely upon the person filling it out to be accurate.

 

Don't they also have a program where they put an actual 'box' in your home to monitor what you watch? I've never been part of that or known anyone who did that.

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I was got equipment once for your retail purchases after filling out a form online. It was a scanner system but I promptly sent it back. Didn’t want the commitment of scanning every purchase in.

 

I would have figured you would keep the scanner...and gut it for parts to make a TV transmitter, or some kind of other diabolical electronic creation.

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Don't they also have a program where they put an actual 'box' in your home to monitor what you watch? I've never been part of that or known anyone who did that.

 

Yes, it's called the people meter. Most big markets switched from diaries to meters a while ago, and now small markets are getting the meters too. Families keep them for two years and then they're reallocated all throughout the market.

 

It's a fairly big difference as far as producing newscasts go. When it was a diary market, stations would want to emphasize their branding as much as possible so that (hopefully) people would remember which channel they were watching, and that they would remember to write it down. But now, the meters record the best five minutes of every 15 minutes of every hour. Stations try to strategically go to breaks at specific times (but no earlier or later!) so as to make sure as many people are watching at :15, :30, and :45.

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When it was a diary market, stations would want to emphasize their branding as much as possible so that (hopefully) people would remember which channel they were watching, and that they would remember to write it down. But now, the meters record the best five minutes of every 15 minutes of every hour.

 

I didn’t realize it was the best five minutes. I thought was an average of the whole 15. As for the branding that makes sense. There was a lot of repetition in the past with call signs or their news title (Action/Eyewitness News). Where to me it seemed stations have dropped that now when they rebrand (perhaps it was prompted by WJZ) that I started a thread. Now the meters just listen to an embedded code in the audio and people have to press a button on whose watching / listening.

 

It came to my neighbor in the mail today.

 

Nielsen won't make me a Nielsen family... because of my many felonies.

 

That and you work/ed in the industry.

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So I guess the mail carrier put it in the wrong mailbox

 

My neighbor even brought me breakfast...

 

And what do they say about sending cash in the mail?

 

Sheesh!

This room gets tougher and tougher each day...you all show me no mercy.

 

Do I need to report the cash to the IRS???

 

My name is on that envelope oh no!

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My neighbor even brought me breakfast...

 

And what do they say about sending cash in the mail?

 

Sheesh!

This room gets tougher and tougher each day...you all show me no mercy.

 

Do I need to report the cash to the IRS???

 

My name is on that envelope oh no!

That was very nice of your neighbor to do that, as for whether or not you should report it to the IRS, that's something you need to talk to your tax agent about next year. Otherwise, don't worry about it

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I was a Nielsen "family" (my family being just me) for a month many years ago (pre-meter), even though I work in television. I completed the form accurately. Nielsen didn't seem to care. Arbirtron also chose me for a radio survey, but then disqualified me because I work in TV.

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I was asked before to join the Canadian version of the Nielsens (they were called the BBM's then to avoid confusion with a certain mobile phone maker, changed their corporate name from the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement to Numeris).

 

I had to fess up to working in the industry and that was it. They called again a few years ago, same story played out.

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