If enough of these tune in to your TV show, the number of real viewers don't matter. Which gave Oprah an idea...

Oprah Winfrey’s new cable network, OWN, is foundering, so the much-worshipped icon of female empowerment empowered herself to rig the ratings system by sending out this tweet to her gazillion Twitter followers ( all right, she has only 9, 253, 598) Sunday night:

“Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Neilsen* box.”

OWN was debuting a new show called “Oprah’s Next Chapter.” Since a Nielson household is one of the 25,ooo Americans whose viewing habits are extrapolated to calculate the estimated viewers of any program nationwide, a direct appeal to someone with a Nielson box is an attempt to cheat. Those boxes count as many thousands of viewers in the ratings process, which is why the identity of the Nielson household is carefully protected. It is also why the penalty for trying to manipulate the ratings (if only the Nielson households and nobody else watched Oprah’s show, the ratings would inaccurately indicate that the program was a sensation) is to have the offending program’s ratings erased entirely.

Oprah is such a powerful figure that many commentators are shrugging off her conduct, even as Oprah has (though she apologized.). Oprah objected to suggestions that she was “begging for viewers”, noting airily that asking isn’t begging. That distinction misses the point. So does Tim Molloy of Reuters, who wrote, “A Media Rating Council resolution opposes attempts to “exhort the public to cooperate with station audience measurement services… because of its possible biasing effect.” In other words, trying to get people to watch may result in them actually watching.” No, that’s not what the resolution means, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Molloy’s comprehension is so weak that he thinks it does. If a Nielson-monitored TV is supposed to tell a rating service that it represents thousands of TV’s, it is obviously cheating to try to specifically influence what is watched on the monitored TV’s. Whether the determination of Molloy and others to  whitewash Oprah’s blatant cheating attempt shows the competence of TV writers or the bias that comes of Oprah-worship, I don’t know.

And this was not “a mistake.” Oprah Winfrey’s life has been television for decades; she understands the mechanism of TV ratings as well as anyone on earth. Her network is tanking, she is having trouble getting sponsors, so in desperation she tried to create artificially high ratings for her new show by making a direct appeal to Nielson homes, which she had to know was forbidden.

One more nasty little detail of Oprah’s tweet: she was urging her fans to tune out the Grammys, which she knew was offering tributes to Oprah’s supposed friend, Whitney Houston.

[ In full disclosure, I was a featured (and unpaid) contributor to an ethics columns in ‘O” Magazine for several years. I also posted criticism of Oprah before, during, and now, after that assignment.]

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* It’s comforting to know that Oprah spells “Nielson” the way I always want to spell it…the wrong way.