• by November 26, 2003

WHO'S SCREWING WHOM? - Of all the explanations for the decline in TV viewing among young men - and there have been many of them - the Riff thinks Gale Metzger's may be the most revealing. Metzger, founder of Statistical Research Inc. and now part of the leadership team at Knowledge Networks, perhaps has scrutinized Nielsen's people meter ratings system more than any outsider. As the presiding research czar in charge of CONTAM's (the Committee On Nationwide Television Audience Measurement) in depth review of Nielsen's people meter system in 1988 - and later as head of the SMART TV ratings initiative - Metzger probed into every conceivable nook and cranny of Nielsen's ratings methods, and realized as far back as 1988 that DYAs (dependent young adults) were MIA (missing in action). They simply didn't push their people meter buttons. But Metzger says the fluctuations occurring this season could have been predicted, simply because everyone knew Nielsen was making changes - presumably positive ones - in its national TV ratings sample. "It fits the pattern," says Metzger using a decidedly low-tech metaphor to describe the retooling of Nielsen's sample: "When you stick your screwdriver in and start turning, things happen." By that, Metzger doesn't necessarily mean that anyone was screwing anyone in this process, just that the very process of screwing around with things yields unintended results when research is concerned. "It doesn't matter whether it was Nielsen, or us, or Arbitron. When you begin making changes, it changes the results." Or, as Magna research chief Steve Sternberg subsequently put it, "Whenever you make changes that improve the Nielsen ratings, the networks are going to lose."

A LITTLE TOO REAL A WORLD - The police investigation surrounding an alleged rape that took place on the set of MTV's "Real World" has become the new center of the media frenzy. It's also raising big questions about how real reality TV can get and what the implications might be for sponsors of the genre. While this is not the first time a reality TV show has been implicated by real-world actions surrounding a program, it brings it to a new level of sensationalism and repugnancy, especially given the horrid nature of the reported crime. The alleged victim, who is not a cast member, but a friend of a "Real World" cast member, may have been drugged with some form of date-rape drug, knocked unconscious and then assaulted on the show's set, which is outfitted with enough cameras that the crime may actually have been caught on tape. And that's probably the kind of reality TV that is not likely to be shown on MTV, but ironically could end up someday on Court TV.