• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 14, 2005

It's going to be hot in Florida this week, and it won't just be the temperature. As Nielsen Media Research prepares to host a series of annual client meetings in South Beach this week, the natives of both Madison Avenue and Burbank, Calif., will be especially restless, as they look to the research company for some vision and assurances on the near- and long-term future of TV audience measurement. The meetings will also be charged by some extra curricula events, specifically two major shoes that could drop this week: The long-awaited outcome of the so-called Nielsen Task Force convened by Nielsen and Congressman Charles Rangel in response to concerns about its measurement of minority viewers; and word from the Federal Trade Commission about whether it can or will take a direct role in overseeing the TV ratings monopoly.

While it's still unclear when either of those things will happen, the Task Force's recommendations are already long overdue, and have been delayed, insiders say, because of the increased pressure on regulators and lawmakers to get involved in the process. In the past week, a number of lawmakers issued new calls to the FTC to clarify its role in regulating Nielsen, and implied that if the FTC does not consider it its purview, that they might draft new legislation to create laws that would make it so.

Those developments provide some added impetus to the Nielsen client meetings, which ordinarily are highly-charged and keenly watched. Those external pressures aside, Nielsen's clientele are eager to understand how a host of big changes in TV audience measurement will impact the way they do business. Among other things, the agenda includes a "client discussion" with Nielsen CEO Susan Whiting that will address aspects of a set of sweeping initiatives proposed by the company in recent weeks. Why Nielsen scheduled the conversation for the end of the first day of its national client meeting is anyone's guess, but those initiatives likely will be the first thing on the minds of attendees.

The meeting will begin with reports from Nielsen executives on changes in digital media that are impacting TV audience measurement, as well as new, futuristic tools being developed by Nielsen to deal with them, including such things as talking people meters, "mailable" meters and artificial intelligence.

The meeting will also include a renewed pitch by Nielsen and Procter & Gamble to garner industry support for Project Apollo, the joint-venture of Nielsen parent VNU and Arbitron to develop a single-source measurement system combining Arbitron's portable people meters and ACNielsen's Homescan product scanning panel.

Another closely watched session will likely be a presentation by Holly Leff-Pressman, executive vice president-general manager of the television/VOD practice at Nielsen Entertainment, which will address "the business model for VOD" and how the Nielsen units are working to develop VOD measurement and reporting.

On Thursday, during a national client meeting created specifically for clients of the Nielsen Homevideo Index, Nielsen executives will address time-shifted viewing, as well as the impact of digital video recorder ratings beginning in January 2006.