• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, August 11, 2005

News Corp. finally thinks it has some legitimate Nielsen ratings blood on their hands.

In financial results released yesterday, the press took the bait from the News Corp. analysis into why its Fox TV station group witnessed a 5 percent drop in advertising revenue in the fourth quarter.

Well, we know. It's those damn local people meters, of course, which produce fewer minority viewers and therefore yield lower advertising revenue.

But that 5 percent drop is similar to the drop off in advertising revenue at other station groups. Young Broadcasting, Meredith Broadcasting, and others -- who seemingly don't have a beef (yet) -- with the local people meters (LPMs).

In an age where finger pointing is good, if not encouraged, many of those advertising revenue results were the product of weak first and second quarter calender periods that are customary after an Olympic and presidential election year.

On the other hand - and there is always another hand for publicly held media companies - News Corp. results surprisingly showed that home video revenue results grew 32 percent for the fiscal year. Unlike other studios, Peter Chernin, the president/chief operating officer, said "We are not seeing any unusual shortfall in the number of copies we are selling."

Considering all the trend stories about the flattening of the DVD market, News Corp. should count its blessings. Subtracting the lows of LPMs and adding the highs of its good DVD sales, I can only offer one un-MBA school-like remark towards News Corp. in this regard: Don't be greedy.

One media buyer of kids programming I know typically says there are always a few TV stations that can be pigs - constantly looking to grab more than their fair share of his kids-targeted advertisers. While Gordon Gecko may say greed is good, it's not always if you want to have good relations with your business partners.

For News Corp. this may not directly apply to its situation with Nielsen. The company may also be correct about the counting of some of its minority viewers.

Even News Corp. can hedge. It blamed the poor advertising market as well as the local people meters for their station results. But what part of that 5 percent drop came from LPMs? We may never know exactly. Though News Corp. probably has a good guess.