How does they know how much people watch a specific show on tv?
A certain number of households across the country are set aside as a soret of control group. The stations that they watch at certain times determine what shows they are watching, and the results of those households are then extrapolated to make an educated guess about the rest of the country. However, as you can kind of see, there are flaws. You can’t tell what’s being recorded on VCR (TIVO, yes, but not VCR), and just because a household (like ours, in fact) doesn’t have cable or satellite, doesn’t mean that we don’t want to watch or buy the shows that are on those channels. We simply can’t afford them. So, to continue the example using our household, the results are skewed towards the major networks since we get those shows for free, and away from BBC-A and Sci-Fi and other pay channels.
