kane

Sorry, I didn't see your question yesterday or I would have answered. The way I understand it the Neilson's are one way they collect ratings data, but they also collect data through some cable providers. If you have digital cable and a cable box the cable company and tell from that what you are watching and they relay that information back to networks.

Obviously, they don't know every single person who is watching a show, but from what I understand their methods are pretty accurate.

I know they also now take into consideration those that watch the show on their websites. While those views don't count towards the ratings and the online shows usually have a lot less commercials they can take the number of online views into consideration.

There have been shows that have had terrible ratings (for example one of the shows I am a fan of called Friday Night Lights), but then they find out that the show has a large following on Tivo/DVR and they cut a deal of some sort to keep it around. In the case of Friday Night Lights they sold Direct TV exclusive rights to it. Direct TV airs the shows then when the season is done on Direct TV they air them on regular broadcast TV. Under normal circumstances, and in most cases, the show would have been canceled, but the fans of this show are very passionate and really voiced their support. There have been shows that have had bad ratings, but did get a lot of people recording it and they still canceled it because the networks are not in the good show business, they are in the advertising delivery business. If people don't watch and support the shows they like, they will go away.

Sorry for the long answer