Nielsen breaks Boston revolt

Nielsen breaks
Boston revolt

Signs ABC affiliate to local people meter system

By Toni Fitzgerald

    After eight months of a bitter standoff over adoption of the people meter to track local viewership in the Boston market, Nielsen Media Research may have at last broken the resistance of the local broadcast stations.
   Yesterday the TV tracking agency announced that it had signed ABC affiliate WCVB as a subscriber to the local people meter service, along with Hearst-Argyle sister station WMUR of nearby Manchester, N.H., and its other stations around the country.
   Until yesterday, Nielsen had signed only cable and public broadcast stations, along with the Univision affiliate.
   With WCVB signed, Nielsen now hopes to see the remaining Boston stations sign on as well, ending their protest of the technology that Nielsen installed to replace the old diary system for tracking local viewership during quarterly sweeps periods.
   With Boston quieted, Nielsen then may proceed with its plan to roll out the people meter in the top 10 TV markets over the next several years.
   Since well before April, the local broadcast stations had raised a number of complaints about the new system, much of it focusing on the viability of the technology itself.
   Nielsen was quick to characterize the complaints as so much grumbling over the fact that those stations would see their ratings decline and those of the cable stations rise under the new system, which has sample viewers punch in viewing date rather than record it in diaries. Researchers found that under the diary system sample viewers were inclined to credit to the bigger name affiliates show they had actually seen on other stations.
   “We are delighted with the support shown by WCVB, WMUR and Hearst-Argyle for local people meters,” Jack Oken, general manager in charge of local services for Nielsen Media Research, said in a statement released yesterday
   “We are convinced that people meters represent a significant advance in local television audience measurement.”
   Oken's statement is absent of any gloating, or relief. For Nielsen, both would seem appropriate, considering the bitterness of the struggle of the past months, with the local stations vowing to hold out as long as needed against Nielsen.
    Back in April, rather than accept the new system, local stations balked and decline en masse to subscribe. The effect was to cut the stations off from viewership data used in selling stations to advertisers, though Nielsen continued sending it to agencies. Agencies have supported the new techonology, whatever it flaws may be, because provides more data and data the full 12 months of the year in a far more timely manner.
   Nielsen believed the absence of data would hurt station ad sales, eventually causing the stations to cave in. Stations argued that they could sell just as well without the data, relying on advertising demand.
   Stations remained resolute through the May and November sweeps periods.
    Early results from the Boston LPM test run in 2001 showed that household television viewing levels dropped as much as 18 percent, as compared to diary results.
   But they also showed a corollary 31 percent rise in the number of people watching, especially among younger people.
   Among the complaints raised over the LPM is that it doesn't measure television viewing outside the home.
A final headache for the local stations has been LPM expenses. The stations incur the majority of the costs for installation of the meters, estimated last year to be about 50 percent more expensive than the old system.
   In accordance with the new Nielsen-Hearst-Argyle agreement, the latter will provide Nielsen services to its 27 stations, representing 17.5 percent of U.S. television households, for the next five years.
    WCVB will receive all of the back data that Nielsen had been collecting but not releasing to the station the past eight months as part of the deal.
   WCVB’s thaw could pave the way for the rest of the Boston standoff to finally end. Nielsen has reportedly begun negotiations with Viacom, owner of WBC and WSBK.
       Other non-broadcast affiliates that have signed up for Boston people meter service are public TV stations WGBH-TV and WENH-TV, AT&T Broadband, New England Cable News, New England Sports Network, Entravision-owned Univision affiliate WUNI-TV and WNDS-TV50, an independent owned by CTV of Derry, Inc.

-Toni Fitzgerald is a staff writer for Media Life.

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