When Nielsen Media Research approached librarian Mike Waugh in May to participate in its television ratings survey, he thought the company would install an elaborate bugging device in his TV set. Turns out, there was nothing so Orwellian about the process. All he had to do was make entries in a log book. "You'd think they would have come up with something new," says Waugh, whose family was a Nielsen home 20 years ago. "It was the same paper diary I filled out when I was 10." Not much has changed at Nielsen since the 1950s, when it developed the log book method for measuring TV viewership. Tens of thousands of pages pour into its Florida data center each week from its sample of more than 100,000 households. The diary notes are crunched and counted, the results sent to the networks and advertising agencies every Tuesday. Sounds so retro, but as the single data provider to the $20.4 billion broadcast TV advertising market, Nielsen hasn't needed to upgrade.
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机译：当尼尔森媒体研究公司（Nielsen Media Research）5月份与图书馆馆长迈克·沃（Mike Waugh）进行电视收视调查时，他认为该公司将在他的电视机中安装一个精心设计的窃听器。事实证明，这个过程没有什么奥威尔式的。他所要做的就是在日志中输入条目。沃（Waugh）说：“您会认为他们会想出一些新方法。”沃（Waugh）的家人20年前曾是尼尔森的家。 “那是我十岁时写的同一本纸质日记。”自1950年代开发测量电视收视率的日志方法以来，尼尔森并没有太大改变。每周从其100,000多个家庭的样本中涌入其佛罗里达数据中心的页面数以万计。日记记录被整理和计算，每个星期二将结果发送给网络和广告代理商。听起来很复古，但作为204亿美元广播电视广告市场的唯一数据提供者，尼尔森不需要升级。
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