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The sample size isn't a few hundred thousand people, though--for daily ratings, called "overnights," it's just 25,000 homes (5,000 for national programming, 20,000 for local stations), which collectively are supposed to reflect the viewing habits of 106 million U.S. households in 210 markets. That leaves a pretty wide margin for error, you might think, and you wouldn't be the only one.

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Nielsen Media Research, an offspring of the firm founded in 1923 by market research pioneer Arthur Nielsen, recently began introducing new sampling technology that it hopes will depict local TV viewership with much greater accuracy. Early results have been controversial, mainly because, in highly simplified terms, they consist of the following:

Q: Do people actually watch all this crap?

A: No."

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