NYT: Nielsen Offers More Details on Lost Viewers

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Nielsen offered up a report on its methodology and potential influences it may have had on the controversial decline in young male TV viewers. The common explanation for the seven percent cumulative decline has been changing media patterns, with a focus on the use of DVD's, video games and the Internet. But Nielsen admits that holes in its methods might account for as much as 40 percent of the decline.

In its explanation, Nielsen again reminds us that the method for counting TV viewers is obnoxiously imprecise. The counting involves surveys, volunteers, measurement by households rather than viewers and other imprecisions that would never be tolerated elsewhere. That said, the methodology has been relatively stable over a long period of time, and longitudinal patterns perceived are likely real.