For the past week or so, my little household has been keeping a log of all TV watched. The fine folks at Nielsen have been paying us for the privilege (I guess that is the full disclosure for this post).
It is a curious ritual. In today's instant access, stat-happy world, this seems awfully quaint. I mean, a paper log! C'mon! And, in the age of DVRs (aka TiVo), the notion that I start and/or stop at show at 15 minute intervals is just silly. Still, I'm happy to do it, if only to show some love to a few of my favorite shows (granted, the Super Bowl eliminated a shows from the weekly watch list).
One other fun thing I noticed: the act of tracking my viewing changed what I watched. It became easier to turn off the TV rather than record that I watched some lame re-run. I wanted to make sure that I was watching the good stuff!
I guess this is why I'm such a big fan of unobtrusive data collection, like most web analytics. Surveys and focus groups are fine, but people will often tell you what they think you want to hear, rather than the truth. It is much better to observe actual behavior, especially if the observation can go mostly unnoticed.