[quote name=\'itiparanoid13\' date=\'Dec 4 2004, 01:30 PM\']I actually hate the rating system. It doesn't mean anything because it only takes a group of people to do it, not the entire nation. With all the digital cable boxes, they really should be able to get ratings from those.
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And then we enter the world of potential invasion of privacy issues. Would you like any Comcast employee to release how many times you were watching "Real Sex" on HBO and use it to blackmail you? Granted, if you order Playboy or Spice on PPV, they potentially already have that kind of deadly information, but privacy policies would state that if the Comcast employee tried to pull any cheap stuff on you and got caught, he'd be fired and brought to court. As much as I'd like to have a PVR, there's still the feeling that anyone who's an employee, whether it's TiVO, Replay or the cable company, can look at my list and wreak havoc with it. I just feel uncomfortable with the cable company having wide-open access to my viewing patterns.
The people who run the ratings say that their samples are scientifically-balanced to form a model group of the public and are as accurate as humanly possible, particularly anything that electronically records viewing. Since the broadcasters and advertisers need a scorecard and there isn't anything else out there that doesn't present privacy issues, under the circumstances the current ratings system is probably the best possible solution until someone else figures out something better.