The Nielsen Box

I'm pretty sure I don't know a single person who has one of these things. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the Nielsen ratings for television are provided based on the number of people in America who have a Nielsen box connected to their tv who are watching a particular program. The only problem is, I'm not so sure anyone actually HAS a box, or at least people who watch good tv. My theory is strengthened by the fact that "The Simple Life" is in the middle of its third season while a brilliant show like "The Office" only has one more show slated to air this season, which, by the way, might end up being the series finale. I just want to know if anyone out there reading this either has or knows someone who has a Nielsen box. They tell us the viewership of the top twenty shows in the paper every week, and every show is obviously in the millions or tens of millions. That means there have to be at least several thousand people scattered evenly across all demographics, and that would lead me to believe that I should know at least ONE person who has a Nielsen box. As far as I know, I don't. I think they're full of crap, personally. There's like ten people in a basement somewhere watching endless amounts of tv and making educated guesses as to how many people are watching each show. Yeah. Why not?