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by Nielsen's slowness to change
Poll finds little praise for TV ratings service
By Kevin Downey
Every five years or so, the media community gets itself in a snit and comes together to publicly deride Nielsen for the terrible job it does measuring TV ratings.
Meetings are held, conferences are organized, all with the intent of pressuring Nielsen to make dramatic improvements.
Then comes the lull. Agencies quiet down and fall back into the business making jabs at Nielsen via internal memos or as a means to fill up a lull in cocktail party chatter.
But the grousing goes on; the TV ratings monopoly and its methodologies never fail to get an opinion from virtually everyone in the business.
With Media Life’s first Burst! poll last week, we decided to turn to our readers to see just how dissatisfied they really were with Nielsen.
Is it possible that Nielsen is actually regarded as an effective service? Is the company really going about making revolutionary changes, as it has promised?
Or is the company just blowing smoke, with no really meaningful intent to upgrade its service?
These were the sorts of questions we asked, and we got a wide range of responses, with 159 readers contributing opinions.
The consensus should come as no surprise: Overall readers, while somewhat forgiving of Nielsen's stumbling attempts to upgrade, expressed widespread frustration with the service as a slow-moving monopoly.
Of the 159 respondents, 41 percent opined that Nielsen’s efforts to improve its ratings systems are nothing more than empty promises.
Just 26 percent ranked Nielsen’s efforts as excellent; almost the same number said it was doing a decent job. Only 15 percent thought Nielsen was doing a dreadful job.
When it comes to how Nielsen is doing in its attempt to roll out Peoplemeters in local markets, the response was more divided. Nearly equal numbers say Nielsen is making real progress (26 percent) or that progress is okay but seems to be delayed by one stall after another (25 percent).
At the same time, 34 percent think that Nielsen would be better off putting their efforts behind an entirely new system that takes advantage of newer technology. Eleven percent feel no major change is going to happen in our lifetime.
It seems that to some degree Nielsen is forgiven for producing TV ratings that fall short of perfection.
There are several realities that Nielsen is facing. First, their national TV ratings, measured with Peoplemeters that track viewing in about 5,000 households, is a pretty good system. Could it be better?
Yes, the sample could be larger and a more passive system--one that does not require viewers to actively program the system to track their viewing--would produce better results.
The local system, a diary in which TV viewers write down everything they and their families have watched on TV in the past week, however, is abysmal.
Even by Nielsen’s own admission, notably outlined in their COLCAM study, the diaries are outdated and grossly underreport viewing. The average home now has 2.43 TV sets and over 62 channels. To accurately write down everything watched during the week is simply not realistic.
A whole series of complicated battles are being waged to keep the diaries, though. Local TV stations, which pay Nielsen the most money, fear a better methodology that will mean a loss of ratings to rival cable networks.
Our Burst! poll suggests that most of you feel those battles will go on for quite a while and that Nielsen is doing the best it can, considering the circumstances.
"Monopolies are slow to react; they need a real shake-up within their company to change the culture," says one respondent to the Media Life Burst! poll. That sums up the most popular response to the question, "What’s your biggest beef with Nielsen?"
Another says, "The obvious, more meters and no more diaries!"
While a minority, a few defended Nielsen.
"I believe [that Nielsen] is doing an excellent job in such a tough market."
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Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.
