I was one of the founding members of The Council for Research Excellence (CRE), a group of 40 top industry researchers from major Nielsen clients. As part of its Media Consumption and Engagement Committee, I helped spearhead the landmark "Video Consumer Mapping Study," which still stands as the best original research into consumer media habits that I've ever seen.

Watching my son's interaction with both media devices and content makes me wonder more and more whether a company like Nielsen (or any single entity) can fully measure his media exposure, engagement, and advertising awareness. Heck, I'm not even sure they can accurately measure my media experiences.

The prime-time TV season has been underway long enough to give us a good handle on how each new show is performing. The following series receive a grade of B or higher. The dramas have one thing in common: There is nothing else like them on television.

C3 ratings for most network and prime-time programs are higher than their live program ratings. Let's think about that for a second. Half the country doesn't even have a DVR, yet Nielsen reports that more people watch just the commercial minutes (over three days) of a typical series, than watch the actual program at the time it is broadcast. This is so ridiculous on its face that the industry should stand up as one and scream WTF!

Five years ago, I had just subscribed to NetfIix and wrote an article for MediaPost explaining why I thought it was the best thing ever. Spending an extraordinary amount of money on programming, reportedly $5 billion in 2015 and $6 billion in 2016, has helped Netflix become in five short years everything I expected and more. While it raised its price from $8 to $10 per month, the difference in my monthly credit card bill was not noticeable, and did not make me even think about canceling the service.

What do "The Big Bang Theory," "Family Guy," "The Walking Dead," and "Criminal Minds" have in common? Viewers spent more time watching these shows in prime time last season than any other scripted series on television.

I remember when the upstart Fox News Channel started to challenge CNN in the ratings. It was the late 1990s, and I was in charge of television research at TN Media. Ironically, it was the Monica Lewinsky scandal and President Bill Clinton's impeachment that drew a lot of new viewers to Fox News in 1998/99. But it wasn't until January 2002 that Fox News surpassed CNN as the cable news network rated number one in total viewers - a position it has basically retained ever since.

A few years ago, I turned 55. After aging out of the mythical 18-49 age group five years earlier, I was now moving out of the key 25-54 demo and into the dreaded and nebulous 55+ category (any demographic group with a "+" at the end is, by definition, nebulous). All of a sudden I was no longer in the target audience for products and services that I still used as much as ever, despite having more disposable income than ever. Too many media and marketing executives see me as though I'm part of my father's generation, with the media ...

Throughout the history of television measurement, there was a certain level of cohesion when it came to media access and device ownership. From the inception of television itself, through the introduction of cable, through the development of VCRs and DVRs, almost everyone eventually got almost everything.This made measuring who was using each medium and device (although not necessarily how they were using them), relatively simple. But today's media world is much more splintered.

The other day I saw an interesting story on MSNBC saying that since 1994, the percentage of Democrats who disapprove of the Republican party and the percentage of Republicans who disapprove of the Democratic party each rose from about 15% to over 50%. The MSNBC reporter struggled to come up with a reason, seemingly oblivious to the obvious: MSNBC and Fox News both started in 1996.