Nielsen Delays DVR Measurement In America
On the other side of the Atlantic, Nielsen Media Research has announced plans to delay its measurement of digital video recorder (DVR) households until 2006. At the same time, the company has responded to industry pressure for independent, third party research to make its TV ratings methods more accountable, by funding $2.5 million in methodological research on TV audience measurement.
Both moves are part of a series of announcements that will set a new agenda for future TV audience measurement in the United States.
The DVR announcement is likely to generate mixed opinion from the American media industry. Television companies, whose ratings are likely to be adversely affected by the inclusion of DVR households, will welcome the delay, giving them more time to adjust their business models. Media agencies, on the other hand, will be frustrated by the move which will delay a more holistic view of how television is actually being watched. Media buyers have become increasingly discontented with Nielsen’s slow adoption of technology that would better show how viewers are actually consuming television, from skipping advertisements through to recording and reviewing previous programming.
When plans to measure DVR households were originally unveiled last year, penetration of DVRs was around 5-6% of US TV households. As Nielsen starts to install meters in DVR homes in January 2006, the number of DVR households will have grown to well over 10% of TV homes. As one Nielsen customer commented: “That’s 10 percent of all households that will have been bypassed.”
Nielsen’s rationale behind the delay remains unclear, but observers speculate it could be due to technical or economic reasons. A positive outcome of the delay, however, is that Nielsen will introduce DVR ratings in 2006 with same-day ratings of both live and DVR playback viewing. Initially, Nielsen had only planned to release same-day ratings for live viewing, followed by DVR playback ratings based on seven days of viewing.
The planned independent research initiative comes amid industry and US government interrogation of Nielsen’s methods. In a letter to Congress and the Federal Trade Commission, the Media Rating Council (MRC) put forward recommendations for either the generation of new competition for Nielsen, or the creation of an independent industry consortium that would have responsibility for supervising improvements in TV audience measurement.
In January, the MRC called on Congress and the FTC to endorse an industry-funded consortium whose main purpose is to develop ‘better measurement techniques’, something the TV industry has not had since the broadcast industry’s Committee on Nationwide Audience Measurement (CONTAM) disbanded some years ago.
Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive