Anyone ever been a Nielson household?

When I was in college I was renting a house with a couple guys and Nielson called and asked if we would be a Nielson household. They paid us a couple hundred bucks for our trouble.

The technician came out and installed the stuff and told us that as long as we didn't keep it on any one channel for more than 30 seconds, then the show would not receive "ratings" from us. This led to strange TV watching habits, like watching parts of shows that we deemed as unworthy for 20 seconds at a time. Certain networks were banned from being watched in the house. Sometimes the TV would get left on while we were gone just to give a show we liked ratings (Adult Swim got a lot of love that year).

Our technician told us that we weren't supposed to tell anyone we had Nielson boxes in our house, but we all told our friends anyway. I saw our technician at a bar a few months later and introduced him to my friends as "my Nielson guy". He was not happy with me.

My roommate even hatched a plot to have TV networks pay him off to watch their shows. He never got any further than taking polaroids of the Nielson boxes off the backs of the TVs. I can't remember how many households we actually represented. Anyone else ever been a Nielson house?

I wish I could be one just to up the ratings on porn.

I did but never got a box just a survey and only 20 bones....

haha that sounds so cool

So you have to watch the show for 30 seconds. I would just flip back on forth on shows I like or don't hate just to increase the ratings.

You got paid hundreds of dollars just to watch tv? How do I sign up?

I've never known anyone, but if I meet someone I would like to beat them in the head. Muthaa's only watching American Idol, and Survivor.

[quote name='pinebarrens']

The technician came out and installed the stuff and told us that as long as we didn't keep it on any one channel for more than 30 seconds, then the show would not receive "ratings" from us. This led to strange TV watching habits, like watching parts of shows that we deemed as unworthy for 20 seconds at a time. Certain networks were banned from being watched in the house. Sometimes the TV would get left on while we were gone just to give a show we liked ratings (Adult Swim got a lot of love that year).
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Sounds like exactly what I would do with my friends. Sounds awesome.

I got some booklet from them once (like 10 years ago) and my family was supposed to right down what shows we watched at what times. They didn't offer to pay us. Needless to say the booklet was left empty.

If I had one of those boxes I'd stick it on the Weather Channel all day. The Nielson people are the reason why things like a Super Bowl party of 5 people or more is "illegal." The NFL listens to them to determine how much to charge and Nielson supplies only data from the TV sets that are on.

Example: 12 people at a Super Bowl party. All 12 see the commercials, but Nielson only records 1 TV on for the 12 people. They can only interpert this as the number of people who live in the house (we'll say when they installed it they knew only 2 people lived there). So while 12 people are actually seeing the game, Nielson is recording it as only 2, which works out to be lower ratings they report to the NFL. The NFL then has to change policy with advertising and it goes on and on and on...

(Sorry for the rant/mindless babbling. I just got done with some nasty physics and my mind hurts )