Oprah apologises for tweet plea for more viewers
Oprah Winfrey's plea to Twitter followers to tune into her show violated a rule of US ratings company Nielsen.
- Published by David Knox
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Oprah Winfrey has apologised for asking her nearly nine million followers on Twitter to tune into her cable channel, OWN.
Winfrey was trying to drive up viewers for her interview show, Oprah’s Next Chapter on her struggling cable channel.
The Tweet she sent asked, “Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Neilsen box.” But the act violates the Neilsen ratings company’s rules -a rule it rarely has to enforce.
Nielsen measures the television viewership of a sample of roughly 25,000 households across the US and works to ensure that the sample is not coerced to watch specific shows or channels.
Winfrey later removed the post and said in a statement, “I intended no harm and apologise for the reference.”
As a result an asterisk will be attached to OWN’s ratings at the time of day Ms. Winfrey’s message was sent, noting a “possible biasing effect,” a Nielsen spokesman said.
Last November, NBC’s Jimmy Fallon declared that he wanted to “Occupy Nielsen.” He told viewers, “This Friday, I want everyone who knows someone who’s in a Nielsen family to call ’em up” and tell them to turn on his show.
“You don’t even have to watch the show, you just have to put it on,” he said.
Nielsen subsequently excluded the show from its averages altogether.
Source: NY Times
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- Tagged with Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Oprah’s Next Chapter
10 Responses
Oprah is not stupid. She intended to influence and spike her ratings artificially.
Now is the time to overhaul all ratings. With so many people using DVR’s, a lot of which are connected to the internet – there should be an opt in to report viewing habits back to a trustworthy source for a more reliable survey population…
As much as I can’t stand Oprah, it seems to be a fair request, albeit desperate. It’s ultimately the choice of the person with the Nielson box.
Let google or Facebook run the tv ratings system. If anyone can track our every move it’s those two!
25000? That’s all?
The ratings system needs an overhaul.
I remember reading a tweet from one of the cast of Community just after they discovered they were not coming back for mid-season asking for people with Neilson boxes to tune in to life ratings. No drama there.
Desperate much?
Surely this is television-101, I find it hard to believe Oprah didn’t know what she was doing.
So you can ask people to watch your show/network but can specifically ask people with Neilsen boxes?
Sounds fair enough although wouldn’t people with those boxes be aware of the ‘power’ they have? If they are not of fan of yours then surely they will go out of their way to avoid you and vice versa. Oprah and Jimmy come off looking silly and desperate..
I read that tweet yesterday and thought it had something to do with the Grammy’s but this is just plain sad. She should have just retired and played golf and bingo with a toilet made of gold instead of wasting time and money on a network channel that wasn’t off to a good start seems though it replaced Discovery Health which wasn’t very popular either. One of the downsides with so many channels on U.S. subscription TV – when there is so much choice you need something good to offer!