Bias - keep this word in your head as you read the following.
I'd like to expand further on ratings, and how we sustained nicely in NJ, even after the team fell off quality-wise after 06-07.
Since I am recently no longer employed by Nielsen, I can expand a little more on the ratings and how easily they are manipulated. Nielsen uses a very small sample size to determine ratings in a DMA. In the NY DMA it was only 1000 homes. 1000 homes, determine ratings for 19 million people. When the sample size is that small, the slightest bias can drastically skew ratings.
For example, there was 1 (one) person who was a Nielsen household who watched Pix11 news in the evening (I dont recall the exact time slot) That person's time as a Nielsen member timed itself out after two years. Overnight, Pix 11 news lost their ENTIRE viewership according to Nielsen when that person left the sample.
Did you ever wonder why cities are picked to appear on a local weather map? It's because a local household is watching that news station at that time slot, and offering up their town on a weather map is a subliminal carrot meant to keep them watching that news daily.
So how does this relate to Rutgers? Well, during the college football expansion period, I was one of a handful of people who would pitch "random" houses on becoming a Nielsen household. Nielsen would choose a primary house in a zip code to participate. If they said no, it was sort of a free for all to pick another house in the area to participate.
Some of the homes signed up were friends, people with block R flags on their flag pole (much more common back then), people with block R's on their cars in the driveway. Anyway, you can surmise that there was quite the Rutgers influence in the local Central / North NJ area. Some of the people I remember participating were the best friend of a very prominent former coach, grandparents of a well known player, a stadium security guard, a supportive local HS assistant coach, etc. I could go on.
Knowing what I said a few paragraphs earlier, in that one or 2 houses can make up an entire tv viewership in a DMA, think about the numbers that can be skewed in just NJ, let alone the entire DMA.
So yeah, while its great that we're in the largest media market, it wouldnt have meant a damn thing if Nielsen households werent watching. Without bias, what do you think the odds were of any Nielsen house watching a Rutgers/UConn game in NJ? I'd say near-zero. With bias in selection, that number changed drastically, and well the rest is history....