Television never ceases to amaze me. Just when I think I've seen it all, along comes a new drama series about a masseuse that features happy endings in every episode. Then another show, one that couldn't be more different and is widely regarded as one of the best in the history of the medium, offers up a similar scene of its own.

For cable operators, the return-path transfer of the data is done via the Internet. The speed by which the data transfer occurs depends on the amount of available bandwidth. The greater the bandwidth for this process, the faster the transmission. Solutions to managing bandwidth include Qip Boxes and QAM Tuners. Both are defined below.

The biggest broadcast story this season seems to have nothing to do with the fortunes of any particular network but rather with the audience erosion, especially in younger demographic groups, that so many of their shows are suffering this spring. Where have all the viewers gone? That depends on whom you ask.

Last week's column discussed the importance of bandwidth in accessing content and the challenge of apportioning enough bandwidth for speedy access while still managing costs. This week we examine the terms and definitions for bandwidth apportionment and optimization. How can cost, efficiency and customer satisfaction be balanced?

Pat Dineen, SVP Nielsen, is a member of Nielsen's Local Television Audience Measurement Product Leadership team. His responsibilities include leveraging Nielsen's technology and know-how in the local measurement sector. Pat is relatively new to Nielsen, coming from CMR, where he built large databases and used analytics so advertisers could maximize their local presence. In my interview with him, Pat talks about Nielsen and STB data measurement, local targeting and segmentation, Nielsen's Code Reader, diary measurement and data ownership, as well as offering some predictions of what's next in media measurement.

As a big fan of Fox's "New Girl," I was surprised to hear that Zooey Deschanel, the show's star, is, in some circles, considered to be a controversial figure. Huh? Who could be more anodyne than the cute and innocent star of this very funny show?

How lucky are we to be able to enjoy a pair of scripted television series that aren't simply two of the best of their time, but also two of the all-time best? I'm speaking of FX's "Justified," which concluded its densely entertaining third season this week with what may be its strongest episode ever, and AMC's "Mad Men," one of the very few drama series in the history of the medium that started out as something better than anything else on television and has continued to raise its own bar during each of its subsequent seasons.

There is arguably no more important feature of the digital marketplace than bandwidth, which impacts the speed with which we can access and use content. There has been ongoing discussion about how to best package bandwidth -- either through unlimited space, or parsed and priced via tiers of usage. The apportioning of bandwidth can impact return path data measurement because it contributes to latency as well as other usage conditions. Variable bandwidth levels are a challenge to edit rules, algorithm creation and metric standardization.

Last year, when I was working as a consultant, I developed the Commercial Value Index, designed to rank cable networks on which were best at minimizing commercial avoidance among their viewers. This year I added a viewer loyalty component. The impetus for the CVI was my frustration when I was on the media agency side of the business. During numerous upfront presentations every year, there would invariably be a handful of cable networks that tried to sell me on some sort of value factors that went beyond Nielsen ratings. In some cases they would come up with some nifty new …

Morning television came surprisingly and excitingly to life this week with the kind of intensity usually reserved for sweeps months. What was so special about this first week of April? I haven't a clue, but it was fun while it lasted. The results of this sudden surge in early morning competitiveness were decidedly uneven, but as I have repeatedly stated in the past, any extra attention that any broadcast network pays to any part of its daytime schedule is a good thing for all of them.