• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 18, 2003

The impact of last week's blackout on the TV business began coming to light Monday morning as Nielsen Media Research informed clients how it plans to treat those markets and shows impacted by the outage.

Nielsen said the blackout "significantly impacted the in-tab characteristics" of its national people meter sample, the basis of all national TV advertising deals, beginning with the onset of the blackout on Thursday, Aug. 14 and through Saturday, Aug. 16. Nielsen said in-tab rates resumed to normal levels as of Sunday.

A total of 4,398 national people meter sample homes provided usable data on Aug. 14, while 4,455 provided usage data on Aug. 15 and 4,558 homes provided data on Aug. 15. Those households corresponded to in-tab rates of 85.7%, 86.8% and 88.8%, respectively. Nielsen's average in-tab rate for the seven days preceding Aug. 15 was 92.3%.

As a result, Nielsen will flag all programming as "breakouts" for Aug. 15, 15 and 16 and said all national programs for broadcast, cable and syndication will not be included in its weekly, monthly and season-to-date averages for those dates.

Ratings for programming on these days will be reported as individual telecasts in all printed reports, Nielsen Media Research software systems, and our electronic deliverables as Breakouts.

Nielsen said local market ratings data for certain metered markets also were impacted to a "more extreme extent," and the decision to report viewing in these markets is being made on a market-by-market basis. Details were not disclosed.