A couple of weeks ago we got a letter in the mail which let us know that Neilsen Media Research would be giving us a call to participate as one of their Neilsen Families to determine their Neilsen Ratings. After they called us they let us know that we would be receiving a payment of $30 for our tireless service over the next week.
After a reminder postcard, a packet of information including our $30 (in cash strangely enough), and a “diary” for us to enter our TV watching habits appeared. Kim was in charge of everything and took care of setting up the booklet to reflect that we were satellite TiVo watchers.
The diary started on a Thursday, for whatever reason, and ran through yesterday. For DVR users you have to write what time a show originally aired and on which channel and then at what time you watched it. I wasn’t here over the weekend because I was geocaching in Des Moines and Omaha so Kim was the only one around between Friday and Monday night when I returned.
There were columns for each person in the household and you are to mark when each person is watching (or even listening to a show). I routinely talk about “passively watching” TV with Kim. I’m usually pounding away on the keyboard on some post, code or whatever and while I’m physically in front of the TV I’m rarely watching it. I guess Nielsen feels that TV affects you regardless of your active or inactive status.
Here was the breakdown for our week’s TV watching:
1/17
- Three hours
- Six shows
- Kim - 6
- Bill - 3 (actively watching 1)
1/18
- Three hours and forty-five minutes
- Four shows
- Kim - 4
1/19
- Thirty minutes
- One show
- Kim - 1
1/20
- One hour
- One show
- Kim - 1
1/21
- No TV
1/22
- Five hours and fifteen minutes
- Five shows
- Kim - 5*
- Bill - 3* (actively watching 2)
* - One of the shows, the season premiere of Breaking Bad was miserably awful and we only watched 10 minutes of it.
1/23
- Five hours and fifteen minutes
- Five shows
- Kim - 5
- Bill - 4 (actively watching 2)
So, after 6 days Kim watched 18 hours and 45 minutes (3.13 hours/day) and I watched (passively included) 13 hours and 30 minutes (2.25 hours/day) of TV. That’s quite a bit more than I ever believed we watched and very close to the world-wide average of Industrialized Nations which watch about three hours of TV daily.
So while most people probably take the $30, happily record their watching habits, and return the “diary” to Neilsen for entry without ever thinking about how much their life is sucked into allowing the cable TV to wash over them, I will be doing what I can to drag myself away from the TV even more than I already thought I was and read and surf just a little more.
That’s healthy, right?
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