Carlton Cuse laments the limitations of Nielsen ratings

There's an interesting video over on the online magazine Advertising Age of Carlton Cuse pointing out that with all the different options for viewers these days, a lot more people watch Lost than the traditional Nielsen ratings can count. This is a point I've been harping on for the past year, so it's nice to hear someone with actual authority say it.

Referring to the rating's slump last year, as well as to "Meet Kevin Johnson," which saw a series-low 11.3 million viewers according to Nielsen, Cuse said, "It gets kind of annoying for us that people report the demise of Lost, or the fact that we're losing all these viewers, and then sort of willfully ignore the fact that you have, as you said, literally millions [of additional viewers]."

He goes on: "We heard one report that there were literally three million [Internet] streams of Lost; there are countless downloads on iTunes; we have two and a half or three million people who DVR the show every week; and then there's about a million, million and a half people who actually buy the DVDs. When you aggregate all those people together, you realize there is a really sizable audience still watching the show, it's just that they're watching it on their own terms."

While Internet streaming usually only pulls in a few ten- or hundred-thousand extra viewers, Lost is the top downloaded iTunes show next to The Office. It's the DVR viewing, though, that really bumps up the viewing.

Take "Meet Kevin Johnson". It's "Live +7 Rating", meaning people who watched it live plus people who watched it on their DVRs within seven days, is actually 13.4 million. And people who watch it after the seven days? Completely uncounted.

Plus, as I always like to say, Nielsen doesn't have any way of counting people who watch the show in groups. And oh yeah, and it wasn't until last year when they started - tentatively - counting college students. Crackerjack system they seem to have there, that Nielsen.

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