THey literrally take only 5,000 people in the USA and give them a ratings box, and make an educated guess as to how many people watch the show. Um really?  THats what we use in this day and Age for the life and death of tv shows? Why doesn't everyone who owns a tv get a ratings box? It would make it, you know, actually accurate.

I just dont understand why everyone still uses this dumbass system. Any guesses why we still use it?

5000 is actually quite a decent sample size.

Taking an example, calculated using this because I can't remember the formula exactly, if the results of the survey are 10% of the 5000 people watch a show, then you can be 95% sure that somewhere between 9.17% and 10.83%  of the 311 million people in the USA watch it.

http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

Edit: This is all assuming that the 5000 people are chosen randomly. I can't say whether this is true or not.

Completely agree, plainly barbaric even that we use this.

Is that how they do it these days? You'd think they'd have more accurate info with all the cable boxes these days.

This.

As long as the 5000 are randomly selected from the whole of the USA it's a good sample size. Sure more would be better, but 5000 isn't bad unless they pick and choose the candidates (all from New York, or all hispanic females, or all over 50years old)

Yep, the real weakness with nielson numbers is they don't adjust for "Group Events". (unless that's changed recently.)

If i'm watching Top Chef alone a 2 am eating some boneless chicken wings. 

That gets them a rating point just as much as if I've got 8 buddies over to watch the super bowl.

My Name is Earl  

I hope they make at least a movie

What they should do is ask eveyone who owns a cable box and/or sat. dish if they wish to participate in the nielsen ratings. If yes, then they allow them to collect their viewing data and maybe knock a couple bucks off of their bill.

So this is how they get there ratings number 0_o seems incrediblely pron to flaws

I want to say everyone who has cable or satellite now is basically doing this, since most providers now require a box (no more analogue cable anywhere, so even if it's a very simple box, it's still a box), so they should be able to pool ratings data for cable or satellite networks, and it would only be the broadcast channels where the problems come in, which of course, are still the most important.