57 Channels (And Nothin' On)

A month or so ago, our family was "randomly selected" to complete a Nielson television survey. They offered to pay us $30 (the cash came in the envelope with the surveys!) and all we had to do was write down all the shows we watched for a week and send it in the following Friday. The surveys finally came last Tuesday so this past week I've been annoying everyone by pausing whatever they're watching so I can record it in our little booklet. (I've already spent that 30 bucks by the way so I've felt a real sense of duty about this.)

Here's what the good people at The Nielson Company got for their $30:

• One episode each of, Top Chef, Boston Med, Design Star, Wipe Out, Tosh.0, and Louie.
• Two episodes each of Law & Order (at least five years old, DVR'd on TNT) and The Next Food Star Network.
• Seven episodes of Unwrapped.

It was pretty annoying to write down the time and program info every time we turned on the television, especially if we ended up pausing something for any extended period of time. I'm sorry, but there are times when a 30 minute episode can take almost two hours to complete, and that even includes fast forwarding through commercials! I don't think I have to worry about it though. Based on our sorry surveys, I'm not sure they'll ever opt to use us again.