All this time, I just assumed it was a sound from a sampler or one of those Casio-style electronic drum kits where it's just a bunch of flat rubber pads. I guess it makes sense that the sound was created naturally/accidentally before someone decided it should be a preset on a plug-in percussion contraption.

Don't you mean "You've got a nerve?"

Homo Sapiens Improvement.

Propellerheads were more of a 1998 sound.

I'm in Durham, NC. We're in a great neighborhood but our house is proving too small for a family of four, so we've been looking for a bigger place in the same general area. Trouble is, so's everyone else who is moving to Durham and we can't compete with all-cash offers or INSANE due diligence money that have been…

It drove me crazy that Mitch kept calling it "Dunkin's" on the Joe Mande episode.

If it's "Off the Market" on Redfin, it's no longer for sale and there is no new owner lined up.

Thanks! I'm coming to Madison in a couple of weeks and I'll look for those at what I'm told is a good beer store downtown.

"Moons Over My Hammy? That's a really good one!"

Excellent summary of what the ratings actually mean, in the practical sense that buyers and sellers actually care about.

Ultimately, the ad buyer ends up paying for what the station/network actually delivers, and not what the station/network sells as the estimated/forecast audience.

Looks like the IBT screwed up, and that screwup was re-reported without verification. From his bio, linked within the selfsame IBT story:

Maybe, but who's to say that Netflix Families would be any more honest or rigorous in their self-reporting than Nielsen Families are?

Netflix would have a slightly shorter list of problems with audience measurement than Nielsen, but even Netflix can't/won't be able to tell exactly who (if anyone) is sitting in front of the screen at a given moment.

Yeah, their methodology is imperfect but it's imperfect for EVERYONE. There will be different bumps and distortions from market to market based on demographics, DVR penetration, and streaming-only households but in the end everyone is subject to the same formulas for Rating and Share.

How Nielsen decides how many Men 18-44 or Adults 25-54 are watching a given program is another can of worms.

In my experience at a local affiliate, very few buyers would ever say "We want to run two commercials in this single program, and that's the extent of our purchase." Instead, they'd provide a target demographic (Men 18-44, Adults 25-54, etc) and buy a set number of ratings points over time. It's then up to the…

Correct. The vast majority of TV ad buys are based on Gross Rating Points (GRPs), where an agency would buy X rating points. If the program fails to deliver X points, they either get make-good commercials until they get up to the agreed level or they get a rebate on their buy.

Nielsen does recruit "volunteers" to report what they watch, but that reporting really translates into Day/Time data when the ratings reports are generated.

Sorry if this is covered in the original WSJ source: I can't read the whole article so I'm just going on what was summarized on The Verge.