Nielsen overhauling TV viewing measures

Fri., June 23, 2006

Phil Rosenthal Chicago Tribune

The scapegoat for why your favorite television series was canceled is trying to address at least a few of its shortcomings in measuring viewership.

Nielsen Media Research, the ratings outfit whose audience figures help establish the ad rates that drive the TV industry, has announced an ambitious – perhaps even revolutionary – initiative that it’s calling “A2/M2,” which stands for “Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement.”

Nielsen is now acknowledging that people watch TV programs not only on their set at home but also in bars, airports and hotels, as well as on the Internet and portable gadgets, such as mobile phones and iPods. So it says it intends to account for all that viewing by fall of next year and the start of the 2007-08 season.

And as long as it’s entering the 21st century, Nielsen also is promising to phase out the dubious practice of having selected families self-report viewing through the use of handwritten diaries in even the smallest of TV markets – that means you, No. 210, Glendive, Mont. – by 2011.

Brad Adgate, a senior vice president of research at Horizon Media, a New York-based ad buyer, calls the diaries “ridiculous” and says that even if the new plan results in nothing but their elimination, “a lot of people would be happy.”

Diaries “hearken back to a day when ‘Leave It to Beaver’ was on and everyone sat in the living room and watched it on one black-and-white set and the mother filled out the diary,” Adgate says. “That’s just not how it is.”

The diaries have been OK at measuring habitual viewing but not so good at tracking shows outside of prime time and away from the major broadcast and cable networks, observers say.

Nielsen – which only recently began measuring the use of digital video recorders, and previously announced it will measure college dorm viewing – hopes to start replacing the diaries with mail-in, battery-powered meters in medium-size markets as soon as next year.

At the same time, it will be testing so-called “go-meters” to measure viewing away from home and on portable devices.

Nielsen also said it hopes to gauge “viewer engagement,” which is of particular interest to advertisers, even though there is no agreement on a single definition of what “engagement” is.

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