Nielsen Ratings Include Pets

Follow my blog Monday through Friday. I'm taking the weekends off. One interesting thing, though: I went out last night and came back to find my dog Nina watching TV. Because she doesn't know how to work the remote, she was watching "Southland" on NBC, instead of her favorite "House Hunters" on the Home and Garden network. The Nielsen ratings are coming under criticism lately because the new technology is making its system of calculating the number of people watching certain shows obsolete. DVR's and online Internet viewing are skewing the numbers - some estimates indicate that the Nielsen ratings are off by as much as 11%. One group that is getting counted: pets.