Is Nielsen About To Get The Axe?

For decades the Nielsen ratings system has been the be all, end all when it comes to tracking what audiences are watching. Those privileged few “Nielsen families” (approximately 18,000 homes) have dictated rise and fall of thousands of shows during that time. Those days may be coming to an end, however. Fans of shows canceled for poor ratings have often criticized the Nielsens, saying that they don’t accurately reflect a show’s viewership, and recently the networks have publicly questioned those ratings as well. Now the networks  are planning to sit down and consider alternatives to the Nielsen system.

This fall, representatives from NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Discovery and Walt Disney will launch a consortium to set up their own tracking system to better utilize the digital transmission that is now mandatory. The consortium plans to award contracts for measuring set-top box data and cross-platform viewers across TV and digital sources as early as October.

I subscribe to a listserv for online advertising and marketing, and the possibility of a new ratings system was the topic of a couple of columns in recent weeks. One company has been testing a version in a small number of homes and analyzing the multitude of data provided. So far, the marketers and ad gurus working on the project have been pleased, if somewhat overwhelmed, by the information coming in from the software. Without giving specific examples, they say that the data they’re receiving shows a somewhat different picture of what Americans are watching than what Nielsen provides. Fans of currently underwatched shows can only hope that the changes are in our favor.

But what if the networks do adopt a second system of reporting? Will advertisers – the real clout when it comes to whether a show stays or goes – accept that information over the numbers coming from Nielsen? Will Nielsen be replaced completely? Or will this turn into a feud as the two systems go head to head? So many questions, but I think we all can agree that something needs to change in the interest of accuracy. It may be too late for shows like Firefly and Pushing Daisies, but a whole new crop of contenders are heading our way over the next few weeks who might benefit from the new, allegedly more accurate system.

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