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Florida Times Union

By CHARLIE PATTON

The Nielsen diary and I have something in common. We both got our start in the age of Ozzie and Harriet and have managed to hang around into the era of Desperate Housewives.

But until a couple of weeks ago, I'd never actually seen a diary, though I've watched TV for more than five decades and written about it for quite a while.

Then a friend who works for a local television station slipped me a diary and urged me to spend a week filling it out.

Like a lot of people who work in television, he regards the diary system with a mixture of fear and contempt.

Fear because the diary is an important research tool for Nielsen, which compiles the viewership numbers that determine the fees TV stations can charge for their advertising. Careers can depend on these diaries.

Contempt because a diary is a research tool from the ancient past, as outmoded as a rabbit ears antenna.

The TV insider who slipped me the diary wanted me to appreciate the inadequacies of the system and understand the heartburn he feels each time he reviews a fistful of completed diairies.

And now I feel his pain.

Because filling out a Nielsen diary is a pain. No wonder, as one TV executive told me, many a completed diary looks like it "sat on a coffee table until the end of the week, when somebody sat down and filled it out from memory."

Think about how most of us watch television today. Maybe we turn on the TV knowing exactly what program we intend to watch. But, just as often, we grab the remote and surf though dozens, maybe hundreds, of channels.

My diary provided space to track the viewing habits of up to nine people. What it didn't provide was the space to track the viewing habits of one person watching nine shows at once.

The book's instructions tell you to make note of any show you watch for five minutes. But there's only one tiny line each quarter hour to record the show you're viewing. Simple math tells me I can watch three shows each quarter hour by Nielsen's own rules.

Still, having gotten my hands on a diary, I was determined to be conscientious about filling it out, even if that required keeping the remote in one hand and the diary in the other.

Trying to faithfully record each show I watched had the odd effect of subtly altering my viewing habits. Once I found a show I was reasonably interested in, I tended to stay with it, rather than flipping among two, three or four others at each commercial break, thus sparing me the task of recording multiple shows each quarter hour. And if I was involved in something else - reading the paper, making the bed, vacuuming the living room - I went without the background noise and left the TV off.

Still, I fell into a pattern one local television executive said he has seen frequently when looking at completed diaries.

For the first few days, I was meticulous. By the fourth or fifth day, I was recording the previous day's viewing from memory and beginning to forget what I actually watched.

But the worst thing, at least for my self-esteem, was the picture I was giving of myself and my viewing habits: Celebrity Poker, That '70s Show, Deal or No Deal, Tommy Lee Goes to College, E True Hollywood Story, 25 Sexiest Bad Girls (blush and groan). Thank goodness for PBS' American Experience.

My wife spent a lot less time anguishing over the whole process. She neither altered her viewing habits nor worried much about filling out the diary. She stuck to her usual approach, flitting from show to show like a bee in a field of daisies. When I gently reminded her to fill out the diary, she promised she'd sit down at some point and re-create her viewing experience from memory. According to the completed diary, she watched two hours of TV that week.

Oh and I have bad news for WAWS TV-30 and the FX network, which might have benefitted from my shameful addiction to That '70s Show.

I never sent in the diary.charlie.patton@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4413KEEPING A DIARYFilling out a Nielsen diary isn't as much fun as you might think it is. Take this portion of a typical page from the diary I kept recently. It demonstrates:-- It's hard to account for channel surfing. If you look closely and interpret my squiggles correctly, you can tell I spent most of an hour skipping back and forth between the NBA playoffs on TNT and The 25 Sexiest Bad Girls on E.-- It's easy to put off keeping your diary until you've forgotten what you watched. According to this page, my wife didn't watch any TV this night. I don't know what she watched, but I know she watched something.-- I have lousy taste in TV. By the way, Elizabeth Hurley was bad girl No. 25; Madonna was No. 1.

Charlie Patton/The Times-Union

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