Here is a photo of the Nielsen television habit tracking box. They break into your cable and satellite box, add some wires, patch into your phone line and then take off, leaving you with what looks like a remote control from 1973. As much as we complain about the problems with online ranking systems, be glad this thing isn’t measuring the success of your website. It may be accurate, but it’s not exactly a passive measurement device and only takes a few measures, from which they extrapolate ratings. The analog version of Alexa if you will.
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I recall our household participating in a Nielsen survey when I was a kid. Back then, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, we used a pen-and-paper logbook, being careful to record every channel change. Of course, you couldn’t easily channel surf back then, so it wasn’t much of a chore.