If you’re anything like this TV Addict, odds are fairly certain that since reading Tiffany Vogt’s fantastic piece from earlier in the day in which she pulled back the curtain on the 16,000 or so Nielsen families whose viewing habits play far too an integral role in dictating what shows remains on the air, you’ve been asking yourself one simple question: How do I become a Nielsen Family? Is there not a better way?
What’s more, how is it that the Network and Cable companies have continued to allow Nielsen — an antiquated service that seems inexplicably adverse to changing with the times — a monopoly when it comes to measuring who watches television when.
Suffice to say, as someone who has witnessed the cancelation of more favorite TV shows than we care to remember as a result of so-called low ratings, it’s a question we’ve been pondering for some time now. Which is where services like GetGlue, Philo, Miso and IntoNow (the most recent, and if we’re being honest, coolest entry into the TV check-in space courtesy of its patented SoundPrint technology) come in.
Our proposal is simple: We would like to harness the power of these aforementioned companies — ones that are already allowing for millions of passionate TV fans to “check-in” with their favorite shows across countless different platforms (see: Web, Android, and Apple iDevices, etc.) on a daily basis — to usher in a new, modern and most importantly, far more transparent method of measuring ratings. No, really. GetGlue, Philo, Miso and IntoNow can keep their stickers, points, rankings and what have you. All we care about — and quite frankly, all they should care about assuming of course the countless companies currently vying to become the TV check-in equivalent of foursquare are truly serious about becoming more than a simple novelty one downloads to their phone and inevitably forgets — is the data.
Simply put, you can keep us coming back to your product by making the check-in data openly available to the public (or, at the very least iamwatching.tv, our community driven website that we’ve already taken the liberty of reserving!) so that the viewing habits of the millions of viewers who are not lucky enough to be among the 16,000 or so Nielsen families, are finally counted. 