Is the goal to see how many people watch the show or how many people watch the commercials?
You hit the nail on the head. Nielsen provides products (such as Ad*Views and NPOWER) where clients can zoom in on data for just commercials or just content. However, the "currency" data that the MRC has accredited for use in determining commercial pricing doesn't distinguish between them. Before DVRs, it was rather difficult to pass the "currency" minimums without watching commercials. With DVRs it's commonplace. We can't tell the MRC what to do, but we can at least help to keep the "currency" what it is, hence the Live and Live+SD feeds which in theory will measure DVR playback while still catching the commercials.
I think it would be better for the television producers to track the content watching rather than the advertisement watching which would be better for the sponsors.
That goes without question. On the other hand, it's better for the sponsors/advertisers to know that their money isn't getting wasted on a show where nobody's watching the commercials. Historically, Nielsen's been the medium that the two sides agree on. Now the "currency" is shifting toward the content providers and the advertisers are getting left behind.
If it is the commercials only, why would you be interested in bittorrented shows without product placements?
Syndicators are always watching for shows that they can sell. If something does well in non-commercial media then that might factor in to their decision to sell it to distributors.
South Park and
Sex & The City are shining examples of how that works in that they both started as independant non-commercial programs which were later were syndicated to sponsored cable distributors.
