Bob CollinsSomeone called my house last week and asked my wife, “is this the lady of the house?”
“There’s no lady of the house here,” she replied before hanging up.
We’re pretty sure it wasn’t the Nielsen company on the other end of the phone. Nielsen, the people who measure what people are watching on TV, and then report to the networks that people are watching garbage instead of decently-written shows, is retiring its “Lady of the House” demographic.
Among the many characteristics its report to network execs contains, the LOH shows what women who don’t work outside the home are watching.
CNBC’s Jane Wells says…
These days, the lady of the household is often a guy. Meantime, the owner-renter is often a woman, who’s probably not really in her house much. She works, or runs 500 errands a day, or both. Maybe she’s a single mother. Maybe she’s not really much of a lady. She’s like a man, only busier.
“Essentially, this is just the latest evolution in our TV measurement,” says Nielsen’s Julia Monti. “An analysis found that viewing estimates for “Lady of the House” are similar to those of the average female and that clients are no longer using this term for business transactions, thus we determined that it’s time to phase it out.”
About 40 years late.
