Although different regions can use various methods, the traditional way to monitor television viewing habits has been a rating system. In many countries the Nielsen Company uses in-house devices that track the viewing habits of thousands of people. These numbers represent what average people of a certain age and gender watch, which then indicates the number of viewers who probably watch a particular show. Networks use this information to gauge how popular certain shows are, which determines how much they charge companies to advertise during those programs.
The Nielsen Company tracks what shows viewers watch on television networks through a representative sampling of about 25,000 households that let the company record what programs they watch.
Every time someone in a Nielsen household turns on a television, he or she indicates which person it is and the box tracks how long the person watches a show. Each member of a household has his or her viewing habits recorded individually, through indicating who is watching the television at any given time. If multiple people, including guests, view a program, each one enters information about his or her age and gender into the box so that the viewing habits of each person can be tracked. This viewer-specific data sets the information Nielsen records apart from data gathered by a regular cable television box.
The second way is tracking viewing habits of increased availability of shows on the Internet. Television networks can easily see how many people pay for and download a show through various websites, and many of them offer shows for free with limited advertising. The number of downloads can be recorded by television networks and might influence decisions about keeping certain programs airing. Many advertisers do not consider such viewing as valuable as regular TV watching, however, which has made Internet streams for shows less financially important than traditional broadcasting.
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