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: 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."

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."

Jericho: New Media

So much information and only one blog so I will condense some of these for you.
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The Hollywood Reporter says ratings for the NCAA men's basketball tournament
weren't great for CBS but the hours of video and audio streamed were up. Just like we saw with Jericho. Hot online does not necessarily mean great TV ratings.
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Amy of RemoteAccess has written a very moving post about Jericho. Her comments on Nielsen ratings are on target and we all know they aren't worth anything these days as more people watch online.

"Look, I’m in newspapers, says Amy. "The same “new media” that’s affecting television is affecting papers. We’re adapting, changing and trying to figure it all out. Sometimes, frankly, it’s scary. It’s a whole new way of doing business. But it’s necessary, because the consumers are changing their habits and if we don’t follow, we’re going to get left behind.

CBS could have become an industry leader in figuring out how to capitalize on the new media."



USA Today reports that advertisers and marketers will be making large investments in out-of-home media platforms. Why is this?

Maybe somebody is realizing what Jericho fans have said all along: we don't just watch TV anymore. Busy people with busy lives watch TV when and where they want and not where networks tell us.
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Jericho photos from the Finale.

Breaking News: CBS Press Release

"Source: CBS Press Release.

On-Air + Online + On-DVR = Many More Eyeballs and Double Digit Percentage Demo Increases

"Jericho" and "Big Brother" Viewer Engagement Across Multi-Platforms Is Far Greater Than Initial Same Day Ratings Indicate

On-air, online and on-DVR viewing are resulting in many more eyeballs for CBS series JERICHO and BIG BROTHER, according to Nielsen Live Plus 7-Day ratings and new data from CBS Interactive Research.

JERICHO:

According to Nielsen Live Plus 7-Day ratings, JERICHO's second season premiere (Feb. 12) ratings increased by +15% in adults 18-49 (3.0/07 from 2.6/07), +17% in adults 25-54 (3.5/08 from 3.0/07) and by more than one million viewers (8.14m from 7.13m, +14%) compared to its live plus same day ratings.

According to CBS Interactive Research, the second season premiere episode of JERICHO was streamed 520,000 times across the CBS Audience Network during its first week (Feb. 12-18) and 700,000 times over a 14-day period (Feb. 12-25).

JERICHO's other online engagement during its second season premiere week included 760,000 streams of episodes from its first season and 130,000 streams of various clips, upping JERICHO's first week cumulative streams to 1.41 million.

Additional online engagement for JERICHO that week included five times the volume of JERICHO searches vs. the prior four weeks, seven times the daily traffic to JERICHO message boards (compared to mid-January traffic) and three times the average daily blog posts. "

Jericho and TiVo

If you have TiVo you can record Jericho (on CBS and SciFi) and play it back the next day with commercials.
It's a lot easier to find TiVo owners than it is Nielsen families.


"The TiVo data is derived from a daily, anonymous, stratified random sample of 20,000 TiVo units from which the second-by-second "clickstream" of behavior and viewership is collected and assessed."


"As with TiVo's normal Stop||Watch data, the user information should remain anonymous and will be randomly plucked from TiVo's usual subscriber base. The change is expected to help CBS adapt both the way it displays advertising as well as the shows themselves; data collected in the near future should allow for ads that are more likely to garner attention as well as find a way to promote other shows to customers who might never see traditional spots, the studio says.

CBS is only the second major TV producer after NBC Universal to use the TiVo service to gauge ratings and reveals an increasing shift away from traditional ratings firms such as Nielsen, which often focus solely on live TV broadcasts."


"Nielsen's newer methods rely on automatic collection, too, and they should be just as accurate, but they require additional hardware installation and will always rely on a smaller statistical sample than TiVo's entire customer base. (Just last month, Nielsen said it would increase its sample size to 37,000 households by 2011.) For TiVo, that's some 2.5 million data points from the grandfathered DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) TiVo users alone, plus 1.7 million direct TiVo customers."

For more info on how TiVo works go here.


Many thanks to Gwen and The Jericho Telegraph for much of this information.

Saving Journeyman Too

Once I became interested in the campaign to save Journeyman I visited their forum . I watched the show a few times and really liked it. I have a special place in my heart for fans who love a show only to see it cancelled.

These Journeyman fans are doing now what we all once did for Jericho and they want to offer a few tips and reminders about what is important.

1. Fans can be involved, even if you have just a few minutes a week. It's wonderful if you can give more of your time but every little bit helps.

2. The campaign can always use more help/suggestions and you can post in those threads on the forum if you're interested.

3. The actions that have the biggest impact on the network are mailing in Rice-a-Roni, sending letters and emails to the network, contacting advertisers. The letters and emails can be brief. The more people who write, the more impact the campaign has.

4. Post campaign action events and talk up the show on networking sites (myspace, facebook, etc), entertainment sites, DVR sites, TV sites.Tell friends and family. Spread the word and encourage fans to participate.Fans can help keep other fans informed by posting on the forums too.

5. Don't give up, be persistent. Let the networks know we want quality shows to remain on the air. There's a lot more information on the forum and there's a newsletter that goes out to forum members.

Get info here about the Rice-A-Roni campaign.


Special thanks to serulous for all her help.

More soon about the campaign.

Jericho Ratings

I was very disappointed by Jericho's ratings last night until I took the time to consider some other things.

1. It's summer. People are vacationing and doing other things.

2. Jericho was pre-empted in some areas due to baseball.

3. Ghost Whisperer was not on last night which probably would have helped us.

4. The time change-from 8:00 CT to 7 CT may have confused people. The numbers were better in the next hour.

5. There appeared to be much less promotion by CBS this week.

6. There were errors on the CBS website referring to the times the episodes would be shown. People just got lost.

7. The Harry Potter movie brought people out in droves.

8.. Finally, these two episodes were totally confusing. Not a great idea, CBS.

Here's how it went:

8:00 p.m.

CBS
Jericho (R)
Viewers: 3.10 million, A18-49: 0.7/ 3

8:30 p.m.

CBS
Jericho (R)
Viewers: 2.84 million, A18-49: 0.6/ 3

9:00 p.m.

CBS
Jericho (R)
Viewers: 3.20 million, A18-49: 0.7/3


9:30 p.m.

CBS
Jericho (R)
Viewers: 3.31 million, A18-49: 0.7/3

More info at:

http://www.zap2it.com/tv/ratings/zap-ratings071307,0,2187913.story?coll=zap-tv-ratings-headlines


Coming Tomorrow: What do we do next?

Hey Nielsen

There has been a debate raging since Jericho was canceled by CBS. That debate involves the Nielsen ratings and how those ratings affected the cancellation of Jericho as well as of other shows. Did the Nielsen ratings truly reflect all the viewers of Jericho? No, because so many fans used DVR or TiVo or watched online.

After Nina Tassler of CBS sent fans the renewal notice for Jericho the debate kicked into high gear. Here we were being told we had to increase Jericho's ratings by asking more people to watch it " live." People became angry and upset when it was pointed out that only Nielsen families who watched live would be counted. What's a Jericho Ranger to do? You can't go through the phone book and call Nielsen families because they aren't allowed to announce who they are.

For now, we are advertising everywhere in the hopes of Nielsen families seeing our efforts. Brochures, flyers, car and yard signs, and more. Then, last night, there seemed to be a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. Nielsen has announced that, later this year, they will launch a website called Hey Nielsen. This will allow people- any people- to go to their website and leave feedback for favorite TV shows, movies, and more. There are two ststements that jumped out at me.

1) Concerning feedback Nielsen says they " may share it with the companies responsible for those entertainment products." Why do it if you aren't going to share it?

2) Nielsen states that users who leave " rich, insightful, and frequent feedback" may be invited to participate in surveys and/or interviews for TV, movies, and commercials.

Hopefully, this will be a way for us all to communicate how large a fanbase is really out there for a particular show or movie. And, maybe, advertisers will see what they're missing out on by not counting all viewers.

Wouldn't you love to leave your feedback? Come on, Nielsen, we need this in place before Jericho returns in the Fall.