Yeah, the TV industry uses the Nielsen's because that's what they got.
But the Buffalo thing illustrates my point
What's the more likely scenario, that the Sabres have 10x the fans the Devils and Islanders do? Or the combo of Comcast dropping MSG in New Jersey and Connecticut, and the Neilsen's counting the target demo in Buffalo 3x as much as the Devils/Islanders?
Even (some, more if not all to come) streaming services that naturally want(ed) to keep their data to themselves have fallen in line with Nielsen, too.
Lot of conjecture in your Buffalo point, that's also more antiquated (old Nielsen) than the newer/additional ways of measurement in more recent times -- including with streaming, out-of-home, additional measurement tools, etc.. It's not the write down what you watch diary era. Though, that said, even with changes we don't see teams shoot up/down the list local or national viewership as a sign that they were screwed by the system/structure in place any given time, so I wouldn't be using that as an excuse, in this case, for the Yotes.
Rating, share, HHs, average viewership, 18-34 demo, 18-49 demo, m/f, etc.. It's not one thing. Collectively they do the job showing what teams are popular locally/regionally (PIT, BUF, etc.), what teams are popular nationally (BOS, NYR / DET is doing good #s in their national broadcasts this season) and so on.
We have decades of data, that data has the Yotes at/near the bottom YoY, especially on HHs and viewership. It's not some conspiracy against them or a flawed metric that no one uses that's screwing them and only them. It's THE standard and shows a frankly common-sense conclusion here.
