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Richmond Times - Dispatch

Nielsen Media Research, the nation's primary provider of national television ratings, plans to dramatically modernize how it measures what TV shows Americans watch. It will broaden the sampling to include shows on the Internet, cell phones, iPods and in airports, hotels and bars.

The modernization project signals the end of Nielsen's decades- old practice of recruiting families across the nation to hand-write diaries of what they watch on television.

Broadcasters for years have pressured Nielsen to ditch diary- based ratings, arguing that they undercount ratings among young and minority viewers, thereby hurting advertising revenue.

Nielsen's first nationwide use of paper diaries came in 1958 when the company deployed them in 50 U.S. markets. The company processes as many as 2 million diaries from smaller television markets such as Honolulu; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Fargo, N.D., for what are known as "sweeps" ratings periods during November, February, May and July.

Nielsen now uses electronic measurement in the 60 largest U.S. markets. The company still relies on paper diaries in 150 smaller communities. The data help form the economic foundation of television advertising and ultimately are used to decide which shows survive on broadcast television, cable and satellite television.

Nielsen has announced plans to electronically measure what TV shows people see - wherever they see them.

That project will boost the company's Oldsmar, Fla., facility, an 1,800-employee technical site where the company develops gadgetry to measure TV watching habits.

By contrast, Nielsen will phase out during the next five years a diary-processing site in Venice, Fla., where 650 people are employed.

"We will finally start getting credit for an awful lot of eyeballs that aren't getting counted," said Mike Mellon, senior vice president of research at Walt Disney Co.'s ABC.

Nielsen declined to say how much the project will cost but did lay out a schedule for changes over the next five years. This summer, Nielsen will deploy technology to measure TV watched over the Internet, with the full 2007-08 online TV season measured.

Limited measurement of shows watched on iPods will begin by 2007, and Nielsen will test new "solo meters" that individuals will carry wherever they go.

Those meters should pick up subtle signals within TV shows and record whenever people are exposed to them. In 2008, Nielsen plans new ways to measure TV viewing in bars, hotels and airports that could boost the ratings of sports and news shows.

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