From May 1 – 7, my household was selected to be a Nielsen TV family. Initually when I received the phone call on a Sunday afternoon…before I left for El Salvador…I thought “Cool, now’s my chance to get some quality TV on the air.” Yet it wasn’t as it seemed. No Nielsen TV boxes to record what we were watching. Instead they sent me 4 TV diaries….one for each TV in the house. I was supposed to keep up with what TV show I watched. The whole thing was very tedieous. Watching TV is supposed to be relaxing. I’m not supposed to have to write down each TV show I watched…how long I watched it….and what channel it was on. Yet, the Nielsen people wanted me to do just that. After the first day it got old. Hmmmm…how long have I been watching MSNBC? Wait a minute…the TV is on, but no one is watching it. Yep, there was a place in the TV diary for marking just that. Soon after 7 days I didn’t seem to care what the Nielsen people got out of this. The whole thing was just too tedieous to bother with.
And all I wanted to know was why they had to cancel “Freaks and Geeks.” And why crappy shows like “American Idol” continue to receive stellar ratings, even though I don’t watch it at all.
Notice I waited until after the survey was over before mentioning it here. As if the fact that I watch “The Wonder Years,” everyday when they decide to revise programming schedules…or develop new shows.