How do they get the TV viewing figures? Is it a rough estimate or do they actually know what channel everybody watched last night?
by 
anonymous
ANSWERS: 3
-
They do polls and surveys. From those, they can estimate. They are never extremely accurate. The reason they can't know what channel you watched is because you could have the TV on but not be watching.
-
I used to be a member of one of these panels that rated British veiwing figures it is quite a complicated process you have to log everything you watch even if you recorded it 4 later veiwing and even if you watched snippets while channel surfing it cut down on my zapping I can tell you
-
In the UK, there are about 5000 homes who agree to have their televisions monitored so that the monitoring agency n gather statistics. They hope they have chosen "representative" homes, so they can extrapolate to the population at large. However, the monitoring only shows what channel the television is on, not how many people or who is watching it. They have also tried getting people to keep video diaries, but people tend to get bored after a week or so, and fill them in later with what they thought they were watching, which is often wrong. The system is similar in the US, though I don't know the exact details.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Copyright 2023, Wired Ivy, LLC