Jacksonville Business Daily

How does the Nielsen Ratings get information about demographics?

I'm really not sure how the whole thing works, but what I am interested in knowing is how it is data on demographics are gathered. They can't possibly know who is sitting behind every television set?

Public Comments

1. They give their survey panels a box that record what they watch on TV, and they get the demographic information of the households in their panels. Hence they are able to figure out the demographics of their sample. Whether the numbers are actually accurate, of course, is debatable.
2. they have some people who get special recievers and the shows they watch are recorded and sent into nielsen, and they do telemarketing.