Great Nielsen Meltdown of 2009 should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever seen one of the company's paper diaries. Until about a week ago, I actually had no clue just how the ratings giant collected data from consumers. Nielsen loves to shroud just about everything it does in secrecy, no doubt because it knows how broken its system is.
But then my mom called to let me know Nielsen had sent her a diary, along with five one-dollar bills. She was not happy.
