Media Companies Form Consortium to Challenge Nielsen

Media Companies Form Consortium to Challenge Nielsen

www.mediabistro.com

Nielsen ratings have been called into question by many, but it's all we've had in the form of an accepted, standardized rating system. The Financial Times reports that some major media companies have joined together to change that. Driven by the lack of a clear ratings source for digital video, which -- thanks to Hulu and vastly improved network web sites -- has suddenly become an increasingly popular outlet for network content, the companies have decided to form a consortium challenging Nielse

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Related News Links:
www.tvweek.com

I hope there's enough room to finish the short article in it's entirety because the story may move...

cont...
the companies have decided to form a consortium challenging Nielsen's supremacy. The players involved here indicate just how seriously this issue is being considered:

Media participants in the consortium -- including networks owned by NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Discovery and Walt Disney -- expect it to be operational by September.

They have pulled in Procter & Gamble and AT&T, the top and third-biggest US advertisers, and Unilever. The involvement of such big names highlights how urgently advertisers feel the need for better information to justify ads that run across multiple media platforms.

Apparently, some people involved are expecting "the consortium to award contracts for measuring set-top box data and cross-platform viewers across TV and digital sources as early as the fourth quarter of this year." Nielsen has plans to fully roll-out it's own measurement of TV and internet usage by 2011.

Seems as though some networks are getting hammered in the ratings. Seems like FNC has been respectful enough to consider the American People really do have legitimate concerns & gripes and can represent them as Americans; not some MOB or fringe element of society.

Some of the strongest hatred that I've seen has been coming from and through the mainstream media.

This new consortium has News Corp. (FOX News owner) joining in as well... It's my belief they joined up to try to make sure the other networks don't cheat FOX out of their astronomical ratings.

Joining in the conspiracy.

www.mediabistro.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 8·14·09 by DrMattMaddix]

back in the day, you had nielsen Settop boxes that clocked what shows were watched and for how long. maybe one out of every 250 households where given a device, and before that, some people had to even keep a handwritten log of the TV they watched, but they found most people just wrote down the most intellectual sounding program.

With the advent of digital cable, you would think it would now be alot easier getting the data of your show and watch time sent back to the transmission station. you wouldnt need much data, just a few ones and zeros sent to a spreadsheet, which would be 250 times more acurate than sampling a small portion of people.

also, They know the IP address of the computer that is accessing the online video, and I bet good money all that gets back logged somewhere, once again, your just talking about a little information getting stored.

The data would be real time, and you wouldnt have to wait until the end of the month or whenever to see the compiled reports.