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Op/Ed by Kate Blake admin MV

Interesting article today talking about how the Nielsen ratings company has done a survey of how many people use the internet and TV at the same time. They take a relatively small sampling of a few thousand people and extrapolate that the majority of TV viewing is live and therefore online viewing and DVR ratings don’t matter and that their statistics show that people who are online are checking e-mail etc while watching TV and that the only people streaming TV series a lot and in significant numbers are teenage girls that advertisers and networks shouldn’t worry about.

What a load of crap! As someone who has taken advanced statistics and knows that by definition statistical analysis is subject to highly subjective interpretation- I see this as a company ( the Nielsen Company) working not on finding out how people genuinely view programming but a way for them to try to rationalize that their methodology for monitoring and metering television viewing is still relevant in the digital age.

Excuse me- but yes- there may be a lot of teenage girls who watch Gossip Girl online because they don’t have a DVR to record it when mom and dad want to watch real programming on Monday nights but I don’t buy that Gossip Girl is the top online series for tv viewing. NBC released an announcement last month stating they had the best month ever for their online content with tons of hits – mainly for viewing their archive of current and retired television series. I sincerely doubt that teenage girls are logging on to watch reruns of Miami Vice or classic Battlestar Galactica. The SCIFI website which is owned by NBC had hundreds of thousands of hits last night during their live broadcast of the annual Ghost Hunters interactive live ghost hunt.

How else do we know this data is an inaccurate reflection of true online TV viewing habits? The Gossip Girl website which is where you have to go to watch it online- doesn’t make the top ten TV show sites list very often- the only time they have this fall is during their premiere week, since then FOX and NBC have dominated the top 10 network tv show website lists on MarketingCharts.com

Heroes, Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles, NCIS , Criminal Minds, Dancing with the Stars have all dominated this fall. I have to believe these rankings must correpsond with online viewing numbers which the networks never completely release. Why are they kept private? These off air viewings are the viewings that were at the heart of the writer’s stike last winter and the networks make big profits on the advertising they generate online. Online viewings – the profits are not diluted by sharing revenue with affiliates, though some affiliates have made the investment to stream episodes from their own local websites through the network which does give them a piece of the ad pie. Again- none of this information is captured by the Nielsen company survey. They looked at what people do online during primetime.

The whole point to online viewing is you don’t have to do it during primetime! You do it over your lunch break, you do it while riding your stationary bike and have the PC running in front of you, you download iTunes or Amazon download and watch on your iPod while you work out- or as I do on a plane jetting cross country. Veoh is great for this. Set your computer to download some recent shows and watch them later in the week- without being online even!

When a department at your company starts putting out this kind of desperate reports it is usually a last ditch effort to justify their existence and keep from getting cut. What does this mean? This means that the Nielsen Company has to be getting push back from their big cash cow clients the big 4 networks who are demanding more  complete reporting of real viewing habits. The networks are looking at DVR  numbers and I can guarantee the website show managers are in on network meetings every week talking about hits and viewings and ad revenue compared to ratings. As the networks are having to go out and find more data for themselves- the Nielsen’s are becoming less important that they used to be. Right now ad rates are tied to the Nielsen ratings but the company that can come up with a new index for reporting viewings and real penetration into the tv viewing marketplace will revolutionize how television programming is evaluated and ad rates are set.

I keep reading where people wonder how NBC can continue to lay out the big bucks they do and still bring in good revenue on lower ratings than the other big networks. The answer has three components- one is they have the best online presence of any major network – remember they own MSNBC as well as the NBC, USA, SciFi, Oxygen and Bravo networks. NBC has the strongest cable presence of the four networks with their programming consistently dominating the cable ratings. Remember- cable is all profit for the network- no affiliates to share any revenue with. Third thing NBC has- they own and produce top 10 shows on other networks. Desperate Housewives, House and Ghost Whisperer are all NBC Universal productions. When you own three top twenty hits that you don’t even broadcast and get paid for them- that adds significantly to your bottom line as well.

Fox, ABC and CBS keep their overall production costs lower by offering longstanding reality TV fare. Reality TV is a staple at Fox- to the extent they have relied on it too much and now find themselve looking for some alternatives. American Idol dropped some in ratings last year but is still the number one series on TV and brings in weekly numbers no other show can match. Survivor has been CBS’s mainstay for years- but it is showing its age now and is not attracting new viewers. Dancing with the Stars keeps ABC floating but I have to think this will fade in popularity a lot faster than Idol- but that is my opinion as I really don’t need to see a bunch of has beens try to get back in the public eye, I prefer to see fresh talent on the rise.

I have written here about how SCIFI TV gets short shifted in ratings evaluations- and I still contend there are a lot more of us who don’t ever fall into the Nielsen demographics who watch television online and live and never get counted.

The Nielsen’s Ratings tend to try to evaluate middle America- families with kids living at home. Single people, people with roommates, older viewers and other people without kids don’t get counted very often. The fastest growing group of consumers in this country is people without kids- either by choice or their kids are grown and moved away. Hollywood actually reflects the trend of more people over 30 and even 40 having kids but the Nielsen numbers don’t.

I am putting a challenge out right now- this is to Gallup, IDC and other big marketing companies in America. Work on building out a statistical model for metering television ratings that is inclusive of more socioeconomic groups, more household types, more age groups, more ethnic groups, and more education levels than the current Nielsen ratings do. Work on a piece of technology to truly monitor what they watch and when- and ask people to submit weekly reports on their other off air viewings. Ask what DVDs they watch and purchase- and rent or stream from Netflix and other sources. I am betting that for the first time in half a century another company could come in and win a big contract to build out new ad rates for the big 4 networks.

Read the Nielsen Internet Article HERE