The Extratextuals

Nielsen have been pretty active recently, with announcements, changes, and additions left, right, and center. I believe Ivan’s going to handle one of those possible changes/shakeups, so I’ll focus on three others.

Increase in the National TV Ratings Sample SizeThere’s the announcement that they’ll be tripling their TV ratings national sample size by 2011 (hence rising from 12,000 households with 35,000 people to 37,000 households with 100,000 people). Sam Ford over at the Convergence Culture Consortium blog discusses this, though more from me below.

Hey! NielsenThey also introduced a service called Hey! Nielsen, which is ostensibly a social networking and opinions site. CCC also beat us to the punch here, with a post from Eleanor Baird. She finds the site interesting in three ways, arguing that it signals:

• “a desire to work with fan groups and give them extra clout, something that I believe echoes a change in attitude in the industry as it tries to quantify things other than eyeballs to sell to advertisers”;
• “a move towards more diverse measurement from an online group”; and
• “an interesting move is that it is seeking to build a more direct, trusting relationship with an audience that probably has fought in the past to keep the shows they wanted on air because of low ratings”

Certainly, offering evidence of Baird’s first point, my quick browse through the site suggested a marked cult fan presence. Hey! Nielsen gives a score to shows that are being talked about, and the day I visited, Supernatural, Jericho, and Firefly easily topped the television scores.more below… Read more…

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