My guess. And only a guess, is that dish uses the information for themselves when it comes to contract negotiations. I can't back this up but it would make sense, for them to be able to have ammo for the negotiations. Also, the networks probably do not want to charge all the money they charge, to turn around and have to pay money back to the companies such as dish, then directv, then comcast, etc to get that data. They can pay 1 fee to a company such as Nielsen. Again, this is all just guessing, and is really based on zero evidence. Just what I have read, and most of what I read was from here. But it makes sense. Open to other suggestions.