Nielsen, the premier American television ratings agency, will finally enter the modern age when it begins to count people watching TV on smartphones and tablets starting next fall.

The agency uses a special set-top box that plugs into the televisions of its 10,000 volunteers nationwide and monitors what shows Americans are watching. (The volunteers are called Nielsen families.) However, until September 2014, Nielsen's count hasn’t included anything watched in real-time on a digital device. (In other words, Hulu fans, you don't count).

“Networks are starving for a number they can publish that really represents their audience not just on TV but across all platforms,” Eric Solomon, Nielsen’s senior VP of global audience measurement, told Variety. “I think it will start changing the narrative that ‘people are not watching TV shows.’ It’s that they’re watching on different platforms.”

The new Digital Program Ratings will include 5,000 Americans and will pull demographic data from Facebook user data.

But as Nielsen has been dragging its feet, other networks have stepped forward, most notably ESPN’s Project Blueprint.

As Variety reports:

It is based on comScore’s services tracking 1 million PCs and 14,000 mobile devices, combined with data from 4.5 million cable set-tops. To that, Project Blueprint layers in data from Arbitron’s 70,000 Portable People Meters to add radio exposure and a cross-reference of television. Finally, in the critical linchpin, the data uses a single-source “calibration panel” of 2,000 PPM users that provides a reality check across all media—TV, online, mobile, and radio.

No word yet on how Nielsen will monitor non-real-time, online TV watching without a TV box.