Antiquated Nielsen

"Of course, earlier I touched on the dangers that television programs face in the relevance of the soon to be antiquated Nielsen system as more and more shows are DVR’d and downloaded from iTunes, as Jericho showed. After Jericho got trashed in the ratings for it’s beleaguered 2nd season, it was the most downloaded show on iTunes. The math (logic) just doesn’t add up, but the advertising dollars do, as far as network execs are concerned, and their fat paychecks are dependent on!

Despite the disparities that we, the viewers are suffering when quality content gets dumped, they say that studios are trying to get ahead of this technological deficit. (Great, then bring back Jericho and Journeyman!)

Despite putting shows online with limited advertising, the revenue from those efforts is only a small fraction of what they make. They say it’s due to the smaller internet audience, and that might be true."

Lotta Nuts

"The Hollywood Reporter received a whole lotta nuts on Monday.

About 1,050 pounds of nuts flooded the THR mailroom, causing rampant chaos -- if "rampant chaos" can be defined as annoyed mailroom employees having to maneuver around 42 boxes of shelled nuts.

"Jericho" fans famously bombarded CBS last year with about 50,000 pounds of nuts to help persuade the network to pick up the show for a second season. CBS executives -- displaying a mix of pride and annoyance -- donated the nuts to charitable causes.

THR, however, is not a fancy broadcast network with a private commissary and neighboring Grove, but an oft-frantic Mid-Wilshire newsroom. When you're on a daily deadline and have skipped lunch because Tim Russert died, you need a desk drawer stocked with protein. Deliveries of free snacks, in other words, tend to be attacked like a UNICEF airdrop. So one of the 25-pound boxes of nuts that was brought to the newsroom was well-received, and by Tuesday several other boxes had vanished from the mailroom."

City of Oldsmar: Nielsen

"Nielsen doesn't deserve support

Once again the City Council of Oldsmar has given in to big business rather than support its citizens who elected them.

Of course, the Chamber of Commerce/Horrors has entered the fray and you know who they would support. Sure wouldn't be labor. They're one of the reasons Florida has such a low wage structure in the first place.

Now as to Nielsen being the largest employer in the city, how can that be when they're firing their longtime employees? Having Tata Consultancy Services supply employees from India does not make Nielsen an employer, only a renter of bodies.

How can anyone in their right mind justify giving such backing to such a bad citizen as Nielsen?"

Nielsen Employees: Oldsmar

"Nielsen Media Research warned its Oldsmar employees Tuesday that more layoffs are coming as the company continues to shift technical work to contract companies abroad.

Through 2009, the TV ratings giant will shed 170 technical support and software jobs in Oldsmar, moving the work to TATA Consultancy Services, an Indian-owned global services company that has taken over local positions at Nielsen.

"What we're trying to do is enlarge our capacity and strengthen our cost effectiveness," said spokesman Gary Holmes.

The cuts come on the heels of Nielsen and the City of Oldsmar last week ending an economic development deal that gave Nielsen incentives for adding jobs in the region — a deal that helped secure Nielsen's operations in the area.

When that phase of job cuts is complete, the company's local employment will drop to 1,300, from about 1,500 this spring. There are about 235 contract employees on the site as well."

Look Out Nielsen

"The Microsoft-Google war has moved from the web to the TV. Microsoft today announced it will buy Navic Networks, an addressable advertising technology provider that enables marketers to dynamically target and measure audiences based on patented technology available in 35 million set-top boxes nationwide.

Scott Ferris, general manager of Microsoft's advertiser and publisher solutions group, told Ad Age the Waltham, Mass.-based Navic allows the company to "take advantage of new-media formats through interactive TV and the measurement of TV viewing for the purpose of having a more efficient marketplace for buyers and sellers." Neither company could disclose specific financial terms of the acquisition.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer believes that all media will be digital within the next 10 years -- and that means TV content will be delivered over IP networks.

"Within 10 years, no consumption of anything we think of as media today -- print, TV -- will in fact be delivered over internet technology. It will all be digital," said Mr. Ballmer at the Association of National Advertisers' annual conference in October."

Nielsen: Reading Online

"Print is having some issues at the moment, which may be like saying New Orleans took on some water. Insults fly, playground-style, about how long one published entity or another will be alive. Microsoft's CEO says no ink-on-paper newspapers or magazines by 2018; someone else says there'll be no Microsoft by then either. Newsweek will be gone in five years, predicts a columnist willing to bet dinner on it; I prefer steak, the magazine's editor shoots back.

A study released last week by the Internet research firm Nielsen Online revealed a part of the problem: People in the computer age are probably reading more than they ever have, so it's difficult to convince them to do more of it. It's the same 24-hour day that's always existed, recalling Mark Twain's quote about the wisdom of investing in land because they're not making any more of it.

People on average spend two hours a day, or more in many cases, reading online at work or home, according to the latest Nielsen study involving about 30,000 users.

Little wonder that they have less inclination, or time, to read apart from that. If my job required me to go to the gym for two hours a day, I'd probably have less need, and even less desire, to go before or after work."

Nielsen: Still Struggling

"NBC Universal and Nielsen have decided to collaborate on new sales measures using data from TV ratings, online video streaming and consumer activity based on specific industry categories. It's just the latest step by a TV network to cobble together information for advertisers that goes beyond the typical reach-and-frequency ratings that have been the benchmark of the business for decades.

"The pact comes as more advertisers are demanding measurements which take into account the new ways consumers are getting their entertainment and information. As more homes secure broadband connections, consumers' ability to watch TV programs and other forms of video entertainment online is increasing. So media outlets are looking for ways to measure viewing across different media venues, not just that taking place in front of the big screen in the living room. Marketers, meanwhile, are eager to discover just which ads lead consumers to purchase their products."

More Anger At Nielsen

"New York's television stations are mad as hell at Nielsen Media Research. And after years of complaints about the monopoly that provides ratings data, local TV executives say they aren't going to take it anymore.

Blaming a ratings slide on the company's measurement system, the stations have begun talking to potential competitors about services that could supplement or eventually replace Nielsen's local people meters, which made their controversial debut in 2004.

But now, stations say they have no choice but to find other measurement sources. They insist that the company simply doesn't sample enough homes to provide accurate ratings for a market as big as New York.

Nielsen's critics argue that in a multichannel universe, the people meters' sample panel of 800 households is insufficient to measure a marketplace of 7.4 million television households. Those figures add up to a ratio of one sample for every 9,000 households.

“The sample size for the local people meters is too small, and it is destroying the market,” gripes a station executive. “Everybody is looking at alternatives.”

All of the executives interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because of agreements with Nielsen not to criticize it in the press."

Disconnecting Nielsen

"Today is the day. The nice folks from the Nielsen company are coming out to disconnect all their equipment. Now that our commitment is over I can tell you that we have been a Nielsen family for the last two years. This is the second time we have been a part of the Nielsen Ratings system and it’s kind of a hoot knowing that what you watch on tv influences the ratings at least somewhat. One of our technicians told us we represented 60,000 households. Wow, that’s alot of folks channel surfing.

"Even though we represented 60,000 households of viewers, Jericho was still canceled. Moonlight was still canceled. I’m not convinced my Nielsen vote helped at all there. But I watched faithfully and always made sure Devoted Spouse and I were both logged in on the remote."



"Nielsen, the fumbling audience measurement company notorious for snapping up the competition instead of building a better product for market, is doing the print industry a favor and promising not to get involved in measuring its audience. Even though its new “anywhere/anytime” initiative promised to be able to measure all media consumption, David Calhoun’s band of incompetents won’t be treading on FAS-FAX territory.

Not only that: Nielsen is looking to get out of print entirely."

Nielsen Nonsense

"The burning question left hanging in the air after the cancellation of Jericho is the following: how does a show that can attract an estimated six million viewers to sit down in front of their TV sets, top the numbers on iTunes, and launch a number of unbelievably disciplined and organized fan campaigns, not get picked up for a third season.

Nielsen ratings.

Edward James Olmos summed it up nicely last year at a Battlestar Galactica convention. “Nielsen needs a hole in the head,” he said, explaining that the current ratings system excludes too many viewers to be reliable. In light of the current global business trends, that really would be the no-nonsense way of putting it.

TV networks and advertisers, however, are not quite there yet.

The main one? Networks don’t have a clue to whom they are delivering their programming anymore.

As the Accenture consumer study shows, consumers take in 70.6 hours of media per week. The catch? A traditional TV device is involved only 23 percent of the time.

Another thing that should come as no surprise is that 64 percent of viewers named commercials as their pet peeve when it comes to watching ‘live’ television."

Insight Into Nielsen

Many thanks to Rich at Copywrite Ink for his insight into Nielsen ratings.



"It’s not a great year to be Nielsen. Every time the company attempts to move forward with Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement — A2/M2 — someone is ready to stop them: clients, competition, consumers.

For Project Apollo, a three-year joint project with Arbitron to monitor buying and radio-television habits of 5,000 households, it was clients. They did not want to pay for the results. Consumers weren’t thrilled with the number of tasks they were asked to perform either. It’s not as cool to be a Nielsen family anymore.

Diane Mermigas, editor-at-large at MediaPost, recently called Nielsen the “about as inane an advertising value as can ever be justified” in her article about other initiatives to find effective measures. She’s not alone.

The differences between Nielsen ratings and other measures continue to grow, more and more shows are seeing 20 percent to 25 percent ratings gains when DVR viewing is calculated and some other are shows doubling their viewership online. It’s easier to get the numbers from TiVo or local cable companies that can count everyone.

Anyone who has a show facing cancellation (most recently, the show Moonlight) is continuing to send Nielsen a message — Nielsen might be confident in the rating system, but they are not. It’s a mounting public relations problem that Nielsen has yet to successfully address. For many consumers, Nielsen’s truncated research, not actual viewers, is the only reason their show was cancelled."

Nielsen and PR

"Nielsen Co. executives are starting a public lobbying campaign to argue that the ratings giant is fulfilling job creation goals, despite recent layoffs, while also offering an apology for mishandling recent cuts.

The public relations effort comes amid a high-stakes project at Nielsen to balance investments in its Oldsmar technical and research center while cutting costs through layoffs and by hiring outside contractors for some positions.

Nielsen is trying to navigate upheaval in its core business of measuring TV ratings, an industry where Nielsen has more competitors than any time in its past. Cable companies, for instance, now can offer direct ratings data from television set-top boxes, and the advent of digital video recorders is putting pressure on Nielsen to better track whether people skip commercials.

At the same time, Nielsen clients such as NBC or Procter & Gamble increasingly want the company to measure audiences who watch media online, on cell phones, in video games and elsewhere - leading Nielsen to invest heavily in new technology to track that viewing."

Nielsen: The Monopoly

Here is a most interesting article that I had not seen before yesterday. It's testimony from Pat Mullen of Tribune Broadcasting to Congress in 2005. The bill, the Fair Ratings Act, shows the need to change the way Nielsen operates. The bill is described as "A bill to provide for the accuracy of television ratings services, and for other purposes."


"My name is Pat Mullen. Our company, Tribune Broadcasting, operates 26 major market television stations located in 15 states from coast to coast, including stations in 8 of the 10 largest markets.

Mr. Chairman, I regret to say that the measurement system we have today in the largest television markets is not worthy of public trust. It does not have the trust of our company or that of more than a dozen other responsible broadcasters.

The problem, Mr. Chairman, is that the keys to our success -- our ratings -- are held by a monopoly. When Nielsen had a competitor, its service and its response to client concerns were substantially better than they are today. In the absence of competition, we are left to plead for fair treatment and reliable results. Time and time again, Nielsen has turned us away.

We have no choice but to do business with Nielsen. Ratings are the currency on which the advertising business operates. And despite recent challenges, our company has always had a good relationship with Nielsen. So we are here today reluctantly, but with a sense of urgency.

Sampling issues abound, including problems with response rates, in-tab representation and fault rates. For example:

* New York's LPM response rate averaged 25.3 percent for the week ending July 3, 2005. This means that three out of every four households initially designated as sample households refused installation of a people meter in their home or accepted a meter but did not contribute any viewing data.
* Young men ages 18-34 have been persistently under-represented in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Fault rates for men 18-34 generally are twice as high as those for men ages 55+ in LPM samples.
* Fault rates remain unacceptably high for important audience segments such as African Americans and Hispanics despite new coaching initiatives. On the average day in New York for the week ending July 10, the viewing choices of nearly one-third of the black and Hispanic men ages 18-34 in the LPM sample were not reflected in the ratings.
* Chicago sample data for the week ending July 10th show that almost one-third of the 443 African Americans installed in the sample were not in tab — meaning their television viewing was not counted in the ratings.
* Households of five persons or more have been persistently under-represented in the total samples in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston. In New York, for the week ending July 10, the viewing choices of more than one in four of the black and Hispanic households of 5 or more persons in the LPM sample were not reflected in the ratings.
* Fault rates for households of five or more are generally two to three times as high as in one-person households."


What happened to this bill? Read here.

Nielsen Kills Moonlight Too

"Dear The Powers That Be at CBS:

Once again, you got me sucked into a drama and reward me by YANKING it off the air! Gee, didn’t you try the same approach with “Jericho”? I thought I learned my lesson after that stunt, but I guess I’m a slow learner. Forget it! You can put the best drama on next season, with the best actors and actresses, and I am NOT going to watch it. Because I know that as soon as I get involved, work my schedule around watching it, find the episodes engaging – then – it’ll get the axe."



“In the weeks leading up to this prelude to the upfront advertising marketplace, the Media Rating Council quietly met, reviewed a crucial audit of Nielsen’s so-called C3 ratings system, and opted to withhold accreditation for what will be the currency for billions of dollars in TV advertising buys.”

Confused? Allow us to explain. You know those upfront presentations all the networks are hosting to solicit ad buys for the upcoming television season? Those billion dollar deals are based on Nielsen data that hasn’t passed muster for the second year in a row.

And then it gets worse."

I am so tired of people not understanding that Jericho fans, as well as fans of many cancelled shows, do and did show up to watch on TV but it's Nielsen Ratings that refuse to count us. The networks allow this to happen and they have to know not all of us are being counted. We will lose many more great shows until Nielsen is removed from their death grip on the networks.

"CBS execs aren't using those words, of course: They love their online fans! But they're done listening to them.

This spring CBS paid attention to a noisy group of Webheads who demanded the return of "Jericho", a show that real world viewers didn't care for but which supposedly had a huge online fan base. The problem -- after CBS revived the show, the online fans didn't show up to watch the show on TV."

Nuts To Nielsen Video

Thanks to NorsU and all those who made it happen.

Nielsen, Nuts, and Moonlight

"TV ratings giant Nielsen Media Research on Tuesday hosted perhaps the strangest protest in the company's history — in fact, the first protest of any sort that company officials can recall happening.

Just more than 1,000 pounds of fresh, salted, still-in-the-shell peanuts were delivered to the loading dock of Nielsen's Oldsmar campus as part of a protest by determined fans of the now-canceled TV show "Jericho."

That's 21 50-pound canvas sacks of peanuts — $1,212 worth — all bought and paid for by "Jericho" fans who want to bring the show back to television and blame Nielsen for issuing the low ratings that CBS cited in canceling the show."


Florida Nielsen workers are furious.

*****************
Just read that Moonlight has been cancelled.




"CBS' vampire drama "Moonlight" will not rise again.

Sources confirm the fan favorite will not be renewed by the network for a second season.

CBS declined to pickup the series because it was failing to hold its "Ghost Whisperer" lead-in and declined in the ratings post-strike. Last Friday's episode garnered a 2.0 rating among adults 18 to 49.

The news will doubtlessly devastate "Moonlight" fans, which have been very passionate for the show by any standard. Recently fans organized a nationwide blood drive to rally viewer support for a renewal.

Nuts Day In Oldsmar

Update: Many thanks to ChiGal76

"Mission accomplished, Nors! Micky's truck showed up at 12:03 PM by my car's clock. There were a group of people standing outside in the loading bay looking nervous for about 20 minutes beforehand. Noon was a great time, because people were out on their lunch breaks. I parked near the loading bay. I missed the arrival of the Micky's truck because I didn't record it properly. THere were 2 HUGE bags of nuts on the back of this white panel truck with signs that said "NUTS TO NIELSEN: SAVE JERICHO" on it. If you ever want to see what 4000 lbs of peanuts look like...it's a lot, trust me. The word must have spread quickly because there were a BUNCH of Nielsen employees peeking through the sun screens to look out over the loading bay. I have videos of that and the America's Second Harvest truck arriving. I didn't see any tv cameras, but I did see newspaper photographers, but then, I escaped before the security people came out to the parking lot, lol."


Get your nuts here. There's still time.
The Nuts are coming to Oldsmar.



"On Eve Of TV Upfront, Nielsen Ratings Remain Unaccredited"

"That for the second year in a row, those billions of dollars in upfront advertising buys will be negotiated, bought and sold on the basis of somewhat shaky, and still unaccredited Nielsen TV ratings.

In the weeks leading up to this prelude to the upfront advertising marketplace, the Media Rating Council quietly met, reviewed a crucial audit of Nielsen's so-called C3 ratings system, and opted to withhold accreditation for what will be the currency for billions of dollars in TV advertising buys."


"When asked about why his network is doing so poorly in the ratings, president and chief executive officer of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker told Television Week, "It's not just about the ratings anymore."

Just to be fair, Zucker explains that the ratings don't matter because the network is fulfilling the expectations of the advertisers. "We're in an era where - we've made a commitment to our advertisers to a schedule. Advertisers have an expectation. It's not just about the ratings anymore. It's about our relationship with our advertisers and what their expectations are."

Nuts, Nuts, and More Nuts

Special Note:

JerichoMonster will now be known as TheMonster. It no longer seems appropriate to use Jericho in the title as this blog is no longer only Jericho posts. Many people were confused by the old title and assumed only Jericho is covered here and TheMonster will cover a wide range of TV topics which include Jericho. The header will change tomorrow.


"Jericho’s Nutty Fans Protest Nielsen’s Ratings System"

Fantastic article with lots of links and lots about Nielsen flaws.


Hats off to NorsU.

Get your nuts here.

"For most people, it's just a bummer when a TV company cancels their favorite show. But fans of the now defunct CBS show "Jericho" are taking the loss of their show a bit harder.

They're fighting back, and the fight is coming to, of all unlikely places, Oldsmar.

"Jericho" devotees plan to picket the local office of TV ratings company Nielsen at noon Tuesday, and dump 4,000 pounds of peanuts on the company's property. Why Nielsen? "Jericho" fans say Nielsen uses faulty methods to measure TV ratings, and those ratings numbers doomed their beloved show.

"It's an antiquated rating system that does not count 99.999 percent of actual TV viewers," said Jonathan Whitesell, a "Jericho" fan and organizer of the protest, referring to the sampling method Nielsen uses to calculate total viewing of a show."

Where Are The Ratings?

Dumbest comment I've seen lately:

""Gossip Girl" is CW's best chance, media buyers and network executives agree. "We know that it's a pop-culture phenomenon," Mr. Haskins said. "It's really kind of hard to understand why everybody knows about it but it's not reflected in the ratings."

Duh. It's not reflected in the ratings because of Nielsen ratings. We Jericho fans well know that Nielsen only reflects a small number of the total watching. Millions of people are not counted.



"He attributes that to "fewer quality new shows" and "the increasing obsolescence of the ratings system. People are still watching TV, they're just not watching it in the same way or in a way that can be measured by the ACNielsen company."

"The strike accelerated a fact of reality, that people are just choosing to watch shows when they feel like it," said Maureen Ryan, The Chicago Tribune’s TV critic. "People are really falling out of the habit of watching something on a weekly basis."



"I was really bummed (though not at all surprised) when I read late last night that ABC was canceling the delightful Men in Trees.

Series creator Jenny Bicks told TVGuide.com’s Michael Ausiello that ABC let the ax fall last week.

Bicks believes, and just about everyone else on this planet agrees (myself included) that ABC is entirely at fault for MIT’s death."


"TNS rejected a $1.87 billion offer from global ad conglomerate WPP over the weekend, setting up what looks like a bidding war for the London-based research firm. The WSJ reported that TNS is in talks with German research firm GfK; Mediapost is convinced The Nielsen Company will make a run at the firm.

TNS is relatively small in the U.S. but has big ambitions. It's making a run at Nielsen's TV ratings monopoly and has recently gained traction. TNS signed a deal with DirecTV (DTV) to cull data from 100,000 TV set-top boxes, and media agencies like Starcom MediaVest are already using the data to measure niche cable channels."

Nutting Nielsen

Let me begin by thanking everyone for all the supportive emails.

Secondly, I seem to have confused some people by what my comment about leaving the fandom meant. Originally, I meant I would discontinue blogging about Jericho and that is partially true.

The main thing I meant is that I will no longer be affiliated with any particular group or message board or forum. I am going it alone. I will continue to post about Nuts To Nielsen but that is the only Jericho campaign I will blog. JM will continue to follow Nielsen ratings and will now be doing extensive coverage of Supernatural on CW.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Thanks NorsU.

"This is the Florida Vendor - hold off to Monday after 10:00 AM - They are setting up website to reflect better shipping terms - We then have a week to fill nut orders."


For West Coast Nuts- go here.


"The "Jericho" fandom may be an irritant to CBS Par execs, but at a time when even TV's top shows are taking double-digit ratings hits, it's heartening to see that TV, even canceled TV, can still stir up such passion in viewers who adopt shows as their own."