Does any work for or know anyone who works for a cable company?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

The reason I'm asking is that I'm curious about whether cable companies can tell how many people are watching any given channel at any given time.

I'm not talking about individual viewers, although conceivably they could monitor them with a few tweaks :scared: I'm talking about being able to figure out that 100,000 of their local subscribers are watching Channel 2 and 50,000 are watching Channel 3 and nobody's watching the county soil conservation district meeting on the public access channel, while two people are watching each of the ten shopping channels.

Do they keep figures like that?

[Duer 157099]

1. I would be surprised if they *didn't* monitor that sort of thing

Although I don't work for any cable company, nor do I know anyone who does.

It just makes sense that they'd do it, though. (why? because they can)

[Eurobabe]

2. I'm sure they do, it's all about marketing...

and Nielsen ratings.