Monday, July 14, 2008

The Nielsen Ratings Family

So a couple of weeks ago we kept getting calls that showed up on our caller ID from the Nielsen Ratings. One day when I picked up the phone to check the caller ID as it was ringing, I actually answered it and it was the Nielsen Ratings. I thought they were going to ask a couple of questions about our TV habits, but they actually asked if we'd be willing to keep track of our TV watching for a week in a TV diary and mail it back to them at the end of the week. So, I agreed. So early last week we receive our big envelope in the mail. The envelope included a welcome letter, instructions, two TV diaries (one for each TV in the house, even though our second TV isn't even plugged in), and $30 in cash. Our TV viewing week began on Thursday and you basically have to write down the station and channel, program, and who's watching it for whatever time slot your on. Then, if you're watching something you've recorded (which we do A LOT of with our DVR) you also have to write when it originally aired.

Things we've discovered in the past four days:
I will read and Jimmy will play video games to avoid writing anything in the diary.
If you don't watch a program for more than five minutes you don't have to write it down so Jimmy channel surfs even more aggressively than usual.

We really do keep track of the things we're watching though. It will be interesting to look back at it at the end of the week and see just how many hours are wasted on random TV watching. Anyone want to guess how many combined hours of TV watching we'll have logged at the end of the week?

4 comments:

CB said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
CB said...

You guys are so funny! I can't wait to read the results at the end of the week! I don't think you'll have that many hours because a) you guys are rarely home and b) you're already finding things to do to avoid the tv journal! Good luck!

JTB said...

I going with 5 hours each.

Ashley said...

So funny that you're avoiding the TV diary! I'm guessing a combined total of 4.5 hours for the week.