Two to three weeks ago I received a phone call at home from a gentleman who was desperate for my input. He began the conversation by asking my age and race, which usually garners a quick hang up of the phone. But on occasion I'll humor harassment, and I allowed the gentleman to carry on. After I explained that I was a 30 year old white guy, he explained that he worked with Nielsen Media Research, the company responsible for television ratings. Apparently NMR is desperate for info from my demographic, because after I explained that I wasn't interested in contributing, he pleaded for me to reconsider. He then asked if he could call back in a week after I had thought it through. I agreed that this would be ok.
Three days later he called and spoke to Gina, and of course she said "sure he'd be interested", despite never asking me. You see, there was a $15 cash prize attached, and apparently we're whores.
In any case, we spent last week filling out what is known as a TV Diary. We received a diary for each room with a TV (so 2 diaries), which we had to fill out with relevant data about who and what we were watching. We each had a column for our names, crossed with time slots. If we watched Full House from 5-6 PM, we marked the 5 PM column with an X, the name of the program, the channel it was on, and then drew a line down the column for each 15 minute time slot we spent watching the program. If we were watching previously tivo'd programming, we filled out the time slot in the same way, but noted the time and channel it was originally recorded from. We also had to fill out a list of every channel we received; I avoided doing this by hand by pulling a list from DirecTV.com.
All of this had an interesting effect on our television viewing. Because it was annoying to fill out the book, I'd find that I would avoid watching programming that I may have previously browsed*. Because John (our roommate) is a comedian, he would diligently note any and all comedy-based programming he watched, and he made an extra effort to view anything that featured a comic he knew personally. I also was tempted to "fudge the numbers" towards how much Major League Soccer I watch, because I feel like anything to help the league is a good thing. In the end, I'm sure my data showed a heavy preference for English Premier League viewing.
Our instructions clearly stated that as soon as the week was over we were to mail our diaries back; Thursday morning I awoke to find that Gina had left both laying around. I was tempted to leave them lie (this was her idea, after all), but instead I took them to work and mailed them back. To be honest, I was sort of hoping that our diligence would pay off in the form of an electronic monitoring device.
Instead, we've received nothing. Apparently we weren't diligent enough. Or maybe we don't watch enough TV; I don't really know. But I can't help but feel used, even if I did get $5 out of it.
Gina got $10.
* * * * *
*I had the option to just skip writing down the information, but I was brought up Catholic.
*In the end, I didn't falsify any information, probably because I was brought up Catholic. But I am drinking Sierra Mist Free, and I stayed at a Red Roof Inn a month ago. Both are big sponsors of US Soccer and MLS.
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