Boycotting the Super Bowl won't impact the ratings… unless you are a Nielsen household

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Who Dats who are boycotting the Super Bowl because of the infamous no-call by the referees in the NFC championship, could affect ratings... if they are a Nielsen household.  

Mary Blue, Professor at Tulane, and head of the digital media production department, says unless you are a Nielsen participant,  the average person's television set really isn't calculated in the Nielsen score because there is no way to measure it. 

"They have two methods, one are the diaries that they do every quarter, but what's more common is the use of a set meter (or a people meter), and that meter is attached to about 5,000 homes across the United States," Blue said.   

But people protesting that they feel the Saints were cheated out of a Super Bowl could still send some message to the NFL, albeit much less impactful.

"If you turn the TV off, your TiVo or your DVR knows that so that could be one impact," Blue explained.

So, numbers reported by cable, satellite and TiVo will reflect that... even though they are not official ratings.  

She says if you do set your DVR to record the game, and you don't want it included in the data, don't watch it for at least seven days. Blue says if Nielsen households turn their TVs on another channel, that will have an impact directly on the reported ratings.

"By turning the TV on and putting it on something else, and walking away from it, it doesn't matter," Blue adds.

Nielsen explains how the company measures TV viewing...

We measure viewing using our national and local people meters, which capture information about what’s being viewed and when, and in the major U.S. markets, specifically who and how many people are watching. To measure video content viewed on mobile devices, we have expanded our panels to incorporate census-style data from third parties in order to capture the breadth and depth of consumer usage.
In addition to capturing what channels viewers are watching on each television set in the home, our meters can identify who is watching and when, including “time-shifted” viewing—the watching of recorded programming up to seven days after an original broadcast.

Bottom line, if you boycott the Super Bowl to send the NFL a message... that message won't be reflected in the Nielsen ratings, unless you have a Nielsen meter.  If you have a DVR, however, your provider may or may not report data to the public and the NFL.