Agencies Raise Weighty Issue, Question Nielsen Over Household Language Plan

Madison Avenue is raising new concerns about a controversial plan that would begin adjusting Nielsen's TV ratings this fall based on the number of U.S. households that speak Spanish. The plan, part of a series of steps Nielsen has been taking to "weight" its sample to bring it into balance with the U.S. population, has already been delayed three times due to infighting among Nielsen's clients, and concern over the impact the changes might have on the TV advertising marketplace.

The issue was raised Wednesday during a meeting of the media research committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and follows a report issued by the influential Media Ratings Council, which concludes such weighting should be based on the characteristics - including the language they speak - with in households, not on households themselves.

"Individuals inside a household speak different languages, and write different languages and may have very different characteristics than could be generalized by a household," says a top agency researcher who attended the meeting.

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That the issue is just now being raised by agencies after three years of delays and concerted efforts by Nielsen to vet its new weighting scheme across the industry came as a surprise to Nielsen executives, who had previously suggested that individuals, not households might ultimately be the best way to weight its ratings sample. But they do not expect that discussion to derail the household-based language weights it will implement this fall.

It requires considerable modification. It is not just a Hispanic issue. It's something that has to be looked at for every single demographic group.

Philosophically, we believe that persons-based weighting can be a more effective way of doing this, but quite frankly no one has done any research on it. We don't know what the negative implications might be," said Paul Donato, senior vice president-chief research officer at Nielsen, who met with the AAAA committee to discuss the language weighting plan and other issues with the agency executives.

Donato said Nielsen has been and would continue to investigate individuals-based weighting - not just for language preferences, but also for any demographic element that might cause Nielsen's sample to be out of balance with the U.S. population - but that such changes wouldn't be simple. Aside from the methodological implications of such a move, it would also require the development of new TV ratings processing systems, which would slow down its deployment and likely raise research costs.

As a result, he said it was unlikely that the concerns, or the MRC report would have any impact on further delaying the language-weighting plan for this fall. "Just because you can think of a step that would be more of an improvement, doesn't mean you shouldn't take a step that will get you at least part of the way forward," said Donato. Ceril Shagrin, senior vice president-corporate research at Univision, agreed.

"It's a first step in correcting a bias that exists," she said, adding, however, "My concern is that it's only partially correcting the bias and people will assume its fixed."

The bias Ms. Shagrin was referring to, is a pronounced under-representation of Spanish-speaking Americans in Nielsen's national TV ratings sample, which is the reason why Univision and other Hispanic networks have funded the development of separate Hispanic TV ratings services by Nielsen. Ultimately, their goal is to get the composition of Nielsen's general sample in balance with the population and shut down the separate Hispanic services.

As part of its plan to expand its national TV ratings sample, Nielsen has set the fall of 2006 to integrate its general market and Hispanic ratings samples into one overall sample. Even then, it won't be perfect, because the U.S. population is expected to continue to change and pose new sampling challenges for Nielsen. While other languages are not as prevalent as Spanish now, they likely could become more significant over time, especially in key markets. Aside from language, changes in the population impact other demographic characteristics that might also require weighting, though the ultimately goal is to have a balanced sample that would require no weighting whatsoever.

"Weighting by household may not be perfect, but doing nothing would be the worst thing," said Univision's Shagrin. "However, stopping at household weights is not the direction the world's largest rating company should be at either. It is a short-term solution that is good only if it doesn't also become a long-term solution."

Whatever the magnitude of these sampling and weighting changes, they are expected to have a profound impact on the estimated share of viewing among English- and Spanish-programmed networks and stations. Donato said the impact of weighting only amounts to "tenths" of a rating point, but for some smaller networks and stations, even such small figures could have a significant economic impact, which is why Nielsen has taken so much time on the issue, and delayed its language-weighting scheme.

In a sense, the language issue is not unlike another big sampling issue Nielsen has had to deal with: digital video recorders. To date, Nielsen has been bypassing DVR households, because they were technically difficult to measure and because their inclusion would change a lot of the ground rules by which TV ratings are estimated and reported. But their numbers have been growing so significant - about 4 percent of U.S. households and growing rapidly - that Nielsen simply could not afford to ignore the issue any longer. As a result, Nielsen has accelerated a plan to incorporate DVR households into its sample next year, a move that will have a profound impact on TV ratings, and which has stirred new controversy about Nielsen.

But as Univision's Shagrin noted, "Doing nothing is not an option. Whether it's language or [DVRs], these things need to be addressed. Otherwise, the sample is not representative."

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