• by David Goetzl , April 15, 2010

In February, Rentrak CEO Bill Livek suggested his company would use a follow-the-leader tactic when persuading stations to sign up for its fledgling local ratings service. That may have been the case in the Fort Myers, Fla. market, where Rentrak made two separate announcements about stations now employing its StationView Essentials product.

First came word that Fort Myers Broadcasting, which owns the CBS affiliate in the country's 64th-largest market, had signed on. Two days later, there was news that Sun Broadcasting's CW station was on board to use StationView. The stations have separate sales forces but share a building.

StationView uses set-top-box data to generate second-by-second ratings and is a potential competitor to Nielsen.

Livek's philosophy holds that once a station takes the data in a market, its competitors will be compelled to follow. That has been the case in Columbus, Ohio, where Sinclair signed on for the ABC and Fox affiliates, then Lin followed for the CW outlet and Media General inked a deal for the NBC station.

In the Fort Myers-Naples area, the general manager of the CBS station, Wayne Simons, said in a statement that StationView will "increase our programming and advertising efficiencies."

A similar comment was released from Jim Schwartzel, who oversees the CW affiliate in Southwest Florida: "Rentrak's service meets our needs by providing a large broad-based sample to track audience flows and deliver accurate viewing measurement for our advertisers." Fort Myers joins Columbus as the second market with stations from two separate owners receiving StationView data. Both have customers who receive AT&T U-verse service, which provides data.