Word: sparger
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...dragon of televisionland is the Nielsen ratings service, and this spring its foes gleefully thought that they had found a white knight to slay it. Their champion was Richard ("Rex") Sparger, an ex-reporter and former Oklahoma state legislator, who boasted publicly that he "could make a hit of a show that was a failure." He also claimed that he had kited the ratings of four programs, notably last February's CBS special An Evening with Carol Charining...
...heartwarming show, but it wasn't all that great: Nielsen ratings scored it as one of history's most popular specials on the tube. Now Nielsen may know why. Gathering material for his book, How to Rig TV Ratings for Fun and Profit, former Congressional Investigator Rex Sparger had mailed out phony questionnaires to the A. C. Nielsen Co.'s normally top-secret sample viewers, designed to ensure that they would watch Bob's performance. "I chose his show to rig because he is such a great man," joked Sparger. "Maybe I'll hire...
...Wasteland. The actions of the small Nielsen sample are extrapolated to determine the habits of the entire tele viewing and radio-listening population. How risky is this? Committee Investigators Robert E. L. Richardson and Rex Sparger had some jolting examples: - In Texarkana, Ark., a woman "didn't like what Jack Paar said on his show . . . concerning the recent Meredith situation in Mississippi, so she turns him off every time he comes on, even though she likes the show." Since each Audimeter represents some 50,000 TV homes in the Nielsen projections, she cost Paar 50,000 "listeners" just...