by Dave Zornow
Published in the Cynopsis:Weekender, 08/29/05
It seems that there is plenty of “fault” to go around regarding Nielsen’s local people meters.
First, Don’t Count Us Out faulted Nielsen for having higher-than-desirable fault rates for minority households in the local people meter sample. But Nielsen says DCUO was at fault because they were over-emphasizing the importance of fault rates in their publicity causing previously happy people meter households to find fault with Nielsen’s practices.
If you are confused, you aren’t alone. Here’s a *brief* look at what’s a “fault.”
Almost everyone agrees that local people meters, providing 365 days of demos in seven major markets, are better than the meter-diary measurement they replaced. However, whether they are “good enough” is where people disagree.
Nielsen says a household will “fault” when it doesn’t deliver quality data on a daily basis. This can happen through equipment failure, when a new DVR/XBox/etc is connected or if the household members don’t regularly push their buttons. Historically this is most likely to happen in homes with a lot of people watching lots of TV. And a lot of African-American and Hispanic households have these characteristics.
Nielsen says that if they don’t have enough households from one of these groups, they will give more weight to the households they have “intab” to properly reflect the viewing of this subsample. They also note that fault rates for local people meter DMAs are generally lower than the household meters they replaced and right on par with the national people meter panel.
WJLA Research director Patrick Castro says “Fault rates are [still] out of control,” in Washington DC, citing wide variations for minority households during July. But major station groups and rep firms don’t agree. “Fault rates in subsamples are not a big concern,” says ABC Owned stations Research VP Pat Ligouri, citing weighting as the appropriate remedy.
Petry’s Research VP Alan Picozzi says the old meter-diary methodology often overstated TV station viewing and “many broadcasters made the assumption that those numbers were real." Now the realities of improved measurement are tampering with the realities of selling all of those reality shows. Now, whose fault is that? ##
Dave Zornow is President/TNG Research, a media research consultancy and applications development company that works with media sellers and research providers.
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