I noticed that almost every day there are several WUSA images on Yahoo's most emailed list. This is great publicity as millions view the most emailed every day. See: http://news.yahoo.com/h/mt/us/sports/?u Considering how easy it is to make the list (2-3 emails) it makes sense for some WUSA fans to ensure that there are WUSA images on the list every day. Yahoo also emails the daily "most emailed" to millions of its members.
more than tv Perhaps this comment is better placed in Business and Media, but I'm simply not going in there. It's distressing to think that the success of the league hinges on ratings such as the Nielsens, when there are so many other determiners of popularity such as Yahoo picture emails, fan sites, and blog spot things that sometimes give a much better idea of who is watching, why, and how much. Why don't the media trackers take these kinds of things into account? Incidentally, is the television industry so completely out of it that they still rely totally on those absurd questionaires and diaries sent to households? I WAS a Nielsen household and I totally lied about what I watched and for how long. They never asked me about how much time I spent on the internet following the WUSA matchtracker or how much time I WOULD have spent watching soccer IF it had been broadcast more than once a bloody week for two hours on Saturday afternoon. This is the 21st century already. Pick up on it boys.
Re: more than tv Because that's not the purpose of the Nielsen ratings. Thier job is to figure how many people are watching current programming and report. The networks then use it to determine the ad rates for commercials during these programs. They don't care about the internet or what you might watch, only what you are watching. For what the cover they are surprisingly representative of the population in a given area. If you want to influence future programming then buy products of current soccer sponsors and let them know why you are buying their product, because the sponsor soccer. Contact the networks that show the game and thank them for it and tell them if they showed more you would watch more. Contact networks that don't show soccer and ask them to consider it for future programming and give them facts as to why they should (demographics, median income and age of potential viewers etc. . .). The Nielsen's have very little to do with why more soccer isn't being shown.