This morning on NPR (National Public Radio) there was a feature article about TIVO and how your TIVO is to report many things about YOU and your viewing habits. Your 'report' is accurate to the second! Needless to say, the article really caught my attention...
For now your information is to be sold to NBC... the selling price for this information was not disclosed.
Your TIVO report includes *all* of the programs you watch/capture, the commercials you skip and those you watch. It will also include your age, income, race, demographics and location. Also included is the total time you have watched any network, program, commercial or *any* information your TIVO delivers to you!
Nielson does much the same thing, but for limited members/users and it provides hourly reports. This new TIVO effort should blow Nielson out of the water.
Now the thing that bothers me is HOW does the TIVO transmit your information back to headquarters? It would require a "uplink" method, phone calls or some other way to provide your specific data if that information is truly to be 'up to the second'?
BECAUSE it will go away soon (as programing changes), here is a quote from the NPR Site!
"NBC Universal has become the first major TV broadcaster to strike a deal with TiVo for the right to use the company's TV viewership research and interactive advertising products. TiVo now offers advertisers second-by-second ratings of programs and commercials and demographic data about the viewers themselves. Alex Cohen talks to Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer about the deal."
The audio link at the NPR Site has many more details, but I could not capture the link for you because it indicates a JAVA link?