Nielsen tracking obscure audience: college students

Steve Safran January 29th, 2007

Pop quiz, students: What kind of rating does a show get if five million college students watch it in their dorms? Zero. At least, until now. Nielsen has begun to measure college students’ viewing habits, in a remarkably late effort to quantify what that obscure 18-22 audience is watching. It had been company policy not to have boxes in dorm rooms, leaving its study of that age group to non-college students or those home on vacation. Unsurprisingly, a pilot on November found that counting college students increased ratings by as much as 50 percent.