Movies and games rely on hard data to determine which products are successful, whether it be tickets, discs, or digital copies sold.
However, as far as television is concerned, things tend to get a lot murkier. That's because the TV industry relies almost solely on what's known as the Nielsen Ratings, statistics provided by a private company who gather their data from a relatively small segment of the population. Nielsen remotely polls the viewing habits of approximately 23,000 American volunteer homes, which are then compiled and used by networks to determine which shows are doing well.
Obviously, this system has a few flaws. Namely, a lot of people these days are watching TV online. Whether it be Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, Amazon, or any number of other services, viewers are rapidly becoming accustomed to watching their shows through their computers, game systems, or internet enabled blu-ray players.
It's taken them a while, but it looks like Nielsen has finally caught on to this trend. The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop on the company's new plan, which will now include gathering data on viewing habits through set-top boxes, consoles, and tablets. The decision came from a committee of representatives from major TV networks, local stations, cable networks, agencies, and advertisers, who met at a New York meeting on Tuesday. The move can by widely viewed as the industry finally willing to redefine what it sees as "television."
Nielsen has reportedly already trialed the system on Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube, and will begin rolling out the hardware and software to those 23,000 monitored homes soon. At the outset, only set-top boxes and video game consoles will be included in the data, but the aforementioned tablet support will follow in the near future. Nielsen hopes to have all of this in place by September 2013.