And with the lowest econimic class being told they can no longer have free broadcast television unless they spend a weeks worth of grocery money on an easy to steal decoder box and the poor no longer being kept hypnotized and brainwashed by television broadcasts (such as half of the main networks line-ups being police procedurals trying to cnvince the population that crime doesn;t pay and the ppolice are infallible) those riots will be coming. Especuially if the current regime declares a state of emergency and refuses to vacate the white house next January.

Not to mention, my biggest beef with the Neilsens and ratings and sweeps overall has always been the obvious bullshit fact that the networks wait UNTIL a sweeps period begins to break out their heavy guns (special movie events, award shows) or their heavily marketed "a very special episode of" runs on a show. That's utter bullshit -- it totally creates a skewed curve. So fuck it: just rate the shows every week, never have sweeps, see how things go after a full 52 weeks or whatever.

Oh yeah! And much like every American has the RIGHT to vote, the ratings/sweep system needs a massive overall so that more people are monitored or can submit their viewing data. But the truth is that would TRULY freak out some of the corporate powers that be. Case in point, here in LA where I live where a longstanding argument has been that the Neilsens don't even come CLOSE to properly monitoring and reporting the Hispanic/Latino community (which being Los Angeles is cleary very huge), which would show that a station like Telemundo is actually beating the shit out of a major network...

its a tiny little aggregate score taken from a few TV's that is supposed to represent everyone in the USA.

Nielsen fails. so bring on 02/09, Nielsen will continue to fail then as Nielsen will fail in 03/09.

Also, they've started tracking DVR recording, although I think it might be limited to services like Tivo, not generic DVRs.