*This is kinda awesome. If people had known it was so easy to
Kill Your TV just by wrecking Nielsen's servers, presumably they would have hacked to ribbons Nielsen ages ago.
*Comes off the RISKS list.
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 14:21:52 -0400
From: George Mannes
Subject: "Server issues" delay Nielsen ratings
Brian Stelter, TV Networks Frustrated by Lengthy Ratings Delay,
*The New York Times*, 6 May 2009
http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/author/brian-stelter/
http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/tv-networks-frustrated-by-lengthy-ratings-delay/?ref=business
(((It's gonna be interesting to see what kinda "server issues" crop up when there is no more New York Times. We're blowing big holes in the media order
(as well as the financial order). It seems kinda likely that some huge odd chunks of data are gonna vanish, and people are gonna reach for it because it's always easy to get that data and it's always been there 24/7/365, and then, whoops, "server issues.")))
"ABC is deciding in the next two weeks whether to renew the TV show Castle.
But the nation's television networks have not received the ratings for
Castle or for any other show since Saturday. Nielsen Media Research, in the midst of a systems breakdown, has failed to deliver ratings for four days in a row, and the networks are increasingly impatient.
"Without the overnight ratings that decide the fates of shows, producers and sometimes executives, the networks are flying blind only days before they make pivotal decisions about next season's schedules. Imagine running a movie theater without knowing how many tickets are being sold.
(((That lack of foresight doesn't seem to slow down Facebook or Twitter, although, whoops, Twitter just crashed again. Does Twitter make any money? No, right?
Wait a sec, do ABC, CBS or NBC make any money these days? They're owned by, who, Disney, General Electric...? And they run on CAR ADS, right? That was the old TV network business model: car ads. That was why they wanted Nielsen ratings: in order to convince people to buy cars.)))
(((Even if you WANTED a new car, would you jump up and go buy one because of what a TELEVISION told you? Really? In 2009?)))
"Nielsen attributed the delay to unspecified `server issues'. The overnight ratings for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are delayed, as well as the broader
TV rankings for last week. ``Since it's necessary to release the data in sequence, we must process Sunday's TV ratings prior to the release of any days this week. We're working around the clock to get the TV ratings back on schedule.'''
