Guys, please help me with this one...

[SpyRI]

Brenna- I never saw that, but in Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America by James Twitchell, in the TV chapter, they interviewed an emplyee of the Nielson corp. back in the days of the handwritten diaries, and they said that they thought people lied a lot about what they watched, to try to keep cultural programming on the air. Like, if they know no one watches PBS, they'll get even less money, so we all pretend to watch a lot of PBS.

PS- I really do watch PBS! I loved Frontier House and 1900 House.

[Maveno]

I saw that Roseanne episode....it was funny as hell! (I did like The Roseanne Show)

[CluelessPenguin]

VJ, thanks! It's nice to hear from an actual Nielsen family member. Just one more question, are you compensated in any way at all? And can you refuse to oblige?

[chompstick]

Regarding how much the Survivors make...
Here is a copy of a previous post I made in another thread:

I remembered having read an article about this a long time ago, so I searched and found it:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/ente...date082500.html

It is in $15,000 increments to a point. The prizes quoted were

3rd - $85,000
4th - $70,000
...
9th - $27,500
16th - $2,500

[cajro62]

thank you chompstick

[Lil_Cutie]

Wow, $27,500? That's a lot of money to make for finishing first on the jury. I was guessing about $15,000. Well, that seals it. I definitely want to do Survivor when I'm 21. Of course, I have to hope that there's a Survivor 13 because that's the first one I can do. Yay, go Survivor! I really wanna do it. I think it would be a great experience.

Oh, I too was a Nielsen Family member for a week. It was a lot of fun! It was the ONE telemarketing call that we actually liked

I'm sure they looked at me and went, "What a lazy couch potato...oh geez, a GIRL?" Since I would watch every one of the football games. Yeah, all 4 of them I bet that surprised them a lot. There was also TRL and the WB on my list, too. So I wasn't completely "weird" although liking football a lot is not strange. I know a lot of girls who do. Just check out the fantasy football league which is nearly half female. Same with our picks league.

But yeah, it is fun being a Nielsen Family. Do it if you get the chance to do it.