Heres what I want to know...

[SpaethCo]

That makes no sense. Why would advertisers care 'x amount of people COULD be watching this program'? They want to know 'Y amount of people WATCH this program'.

It's an important statistic that exactly 0% of TurboHD and HD Absolute subscribers are viewing commercials on Fox News.

We're talking about the dynamic of big companies doing deals with big companies. The Viacoms of the world want to present the greatest demographic and ratings share possible when selling advertising time to companies like Proctor and Gamble to get the biggest overall deal possible. P&G likes the arrangement because it gets them significant exposure while eliminating overhead in the number of advertising contracts they need to negotiate, and Viacom likes these arrangements because they mean big solid chucks of revenue.

Each channel has it's own composite ratings value, so what Fox, Viacom, Disney, etc want to do is package as many channels together to present the highest overall viewer share to their advertisers.

These companies also know that some channels are more essential to viewers than others, so they dangle those as bait to get the cable / satellite companies to play along.

Notice how DirecTV, ATT (U-Verse), Verizon (FiOS), nor any cable company has been able to negotiate a "HD Only" package the way Dish was able to? That should be your first clue how much the actual content producers are against this type of plan.

 

[TheKrell]

It's an important statistic that exactly 0% of TurboHD and HD Absolute subscribers are viewing commercials on Fox News.

We're talking about the dynamic of big companies doing deals with big companies...

But "potential eyeballs" or "percentage over a bundle" of channels are both false metrics. This means one set of big companies is literally selling a lie, while the other set of big companies is throwing their money away.

The second set should be holding out for a valid metric, such as actual eyeballs at a given time on a given channel. Allowing program providers to air commercials on any channel whatsoever (HD or SD or SD-only) regardless of actual viewership, is about as stupid as allowing them to air the commercial at 3AM. Also mixing up HD customers with SD customers is stupid because SD-only customers aren't buying much of anything these days. Smart advertisers should be specifically going after HD customers who are still buying things.

Where is Nielsen in this debate? Don't they provide valid metrics, broken down by real (not potential) HD and SD customers?

 

[jdmacor]

Where is Nielsen in this debate? Don't they provide valid metrics, broken down by real (not potential) HD and SD customers?

No, not really. Most of the nielsen ratings are still done by paper survey, which is a terrible method to gather data; people lie, exaggerate, etc. The best method they have, the little boxes attached to your tv, is only used in about 5,000 homes. Look up the nielsen critiques, and you will see the issues. I feel like the providers would be the best source of info for hd vs. sd, but who knows.

 

[STL]

TiVo also provides real ratings metrics/statistics.

 

[KAB]

No, not really. Most of the nielsen ratings are still done by paper survey, which is a terrible method to gather data; people lie, exaggerate, etc.

I just started a one week diary and all I can say is you're right. It's clear they don't know what to do about DVR's. Their instructions say one thing, but the diary says another regarding where/how to enter it. Like the typewriter, these paper diaries have become archaic fast.