Two weeks after Superstorm Sandy knocked much of the East Coast -- including many Nielsen households -- off the grid, Nielsen held a meeting with its East Coast clients to brief them on some important developments, but essentially ignored the elephant in the room: Sandy. In fact, there wasn’t even a room for the elephant. The meeting, conducted via a webinar, was thrown together when Nielsen’s original national client meeting was canceled on Oct. 31 due to the aftermath of Sandy, and a powerful Nor’easter. What’s surprising is that the effect those natural disasters was having on national and local TV ratings wasn’t on the agenda, and wasn’t even discussed, except obliquely during the Q&A portion of the webinar. What’s even more surprising is that, with the exception of a few news articles, there hasn’t been more discussion about the impact Sandy has had on the currency of the TV ratings business -- and the advertising deals that were based on them. I’m not sure why, except that, I imagine, many clients, agencies and even TV networks and stations are still so consumed by other matters -- personal or business-wise -- that they haven’t had time to focus on the business at hand. But Nielsen had already announced that it was withholding all its survey data for the entire month of November for the New York DMA, the nation’s largest market, and that it was evaluating the impact on four other big East Coast markets -- Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Cleveland -- which together represent more than 13% of its entire national TV ratings sample. On Thursday, Nielsen began informing clients which days would also be excluded from Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Cleveland (see below), because they failed to meet its statistical guidelines for reporting ratings data. It also announced that it would hold another webinar Nov. 20 to brief clients on its Sandy “recovery” plans. Since there has been hardly any public comment form Nielsen clients -- TV, advertiser, agency or otherwise -- I’d offer the comments field of this post to anyone who would like to say anything about it. And keep in mind that every Nielsen household knocked off Nielsen’s grid -- however long -- represenst 0.0005% of its 20,000 national household ratings sample. Dates Excluded From Nielsen’s Local TV Ratings Due To Superstorm Sandy Philadelphia Boston Baltimore Cleveland Oct. 29 Yes Yes Yes Yes Oct. 30 Yes Yes Yes Yes Oct. 31 Yes No No No Nov. 1 Yes No No No Nov. 2 Yes No No No Source: Nielsen