• by April 6, 2004

SO, WHO'S BEEN PLAYING CHICKEN IN THE FOX COOP? - With Nielsen expected to announce later today that it will yield to the immense pressure building from broadcast, political and consumer advocacy groups to delay the rollout of people meters in the Big Apple, you'd think that the people behind the successful campaign would be tripping over themselves to take credit for it. And maybe they are, the problem is nobody seems to be able to tell the Riff exactly who's responsible for it. The code of secrecy surrounding the marketing effort - unprecedented in the history of a Nielsen ratings debate (and there have been plenty of those) - has all the earmarks of high-powered political intrigue: sealed lips, lots of finger-pointing and virtually no paper trail to speak of. This is surprising for such a public campaign that has involved speeches and statements by legislative leaders, direct mail and ads in major daily papers. But the Riff has seen this kind of cloak-and-dagger media spin before and if our deduction is correct, the trail likely ends with an old master of political spin and corporate positioning, Fox News Channel chief, Roger Ailes.

"It is not us," Ed Dandridge, managing partner of BrandSphere, the high-level marketing communications firm that's listed as the official press contact for Don't Count Us Out, the advocacy group that is the public embodiment of the campaign against Nielsen. "We only handle the public relations as far as press contacts are concerned - to help field press."

Asked who actually is responsible for the marketing effort, Dandrige told the Riff, "I don't know," and referred all other questions to Alex Nogales.

"I don't have any of that information," Nogales, president of the national Hispanic Media Coalition and an ongoing critic of Nielsen's measurement of minorities, told the Riff. "I had little to do with the campaign other than getting Edward James Olmos to appear in one of the ads."

Nogales who's been one of the public faces in front of Don't Count Us Out then referred the Riff to "Angela McGowan at Fox. She's coordinating the whole thing."

That's when the whole thing started to finally make sense. Fox and its parent News Corp. have been big opponents of Nielsen's rollout of local people meters and have recently begun playing the race card to delay the New York rollout, which News Corp. Deputy COO Lachlan Murdoch recently claimed Nielsen's local people meters "under-count" viewing to Hispanics and African Americans.

If that were the end of this tale, it would be no different than the scores of other corporate fronts that have been mounted against Nielsen over the years. But this one has taken on decidedly political overtones that appear to have crossed some ironic party lines. And the Riff wouldn't be surprised if Fox News' Ailes has been pulling many of those strings.

We could almost hear Ailes defiantly intone, "I'm going down there to kick some ass" when confronted by a Nielsen executive on a recent train trip down to D.C. With the help of some unusual allies, including a number of former Clinton administration staffers - and even Hilary herself - Ailes appears to have done just that. Anyway, it seems to have worked. Nielsen CEO Susan Whiting and Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) have scheduled a press conference for noon (ET) today to discuss "TV Ratings."

The only thing we can't figure out is why Ailes would be shilling to delay a TV ratings measurement system that would likely help boost representation - and ostensibly ratings - for Fox News Channel. Then again, it likely would hurt ratings for Fox's broadcast TV station group, which brings in decidedly more revenues to News Corp. and Fox Entertainment.

IT MAY BE THE GREAT WHITE NORTH, BUT WHERE'S THE RED AND BLUE? - The Riff frequently feels as if it were a alone in the world, but we're feeling especially so after reviewing the findings of a Harris Interactive study of other nations' views of the U.S. and its policies. It's not that we were surprised to learn that major European industrials like France, Germany, Spain, Italy and even Great Britain have a relatively negative attitude toward the States, it's the fact that our next-door neighbors do. Generally speaking, Canadians appear to be just as sour on the U.S. as the Western Europeans about almost all things American, except one, our media content. In fact, our northern neighbors apparently think more highly of American films and TV programs than Americans do. While only 48 percent of Western Europeans and 44 percent of Americans think positively of U.S. media content, 60 percent of Canadians do, according to the Harris Interactive survey. Perhaps it's the fact that so many Canadian actors appear in American TV shows and films, or maybe it's all those reruns of SCTV. The only other area where Canadians appear to have any affinity with American culture is our cuisine. More than half (53 percent) of Canadians have a positive view of American food, vs. only 17 percent of Western Europeans.