• by August 9, 2004

RIGHT BACK WHERE THE RIFF WANTS TO BE -- Phew! When the Riff was away on an uncharacteristic vacation last week, we worried that we'd miss a lot of important news and some industry-altering developments. But as it turns out, not much appears to have changed. Young men are still watching TV. Nielsen is still under attack. TiVo is still the most over-stated source of industry debate. And Jon Mandel still reigns supreme - even a little more so. Or, to paraphrase NBC research chief Alan Wurtzel, "It kind of went right back where the Riff intended it to be." Actually, the Riff has no other intention than to weigh in on industry news developments when they are developing, but we hardly consider New York Times reporter Bill Carter's "expose" that Nielsen may be jiggling its ratings methods to placate the networks to be anything but a new revelation. It's a perennial harangue and if the networks are serious about their allegations why don't they put their legal fees where their mouths are and bring debate into a public forum and the courts of law. That's what NBC threatened the last time the networks experienced a roller coaster in young adult TV usage levels in 1998. But maybe the networks simply prefer making their case through the court of PR opinion, nudging Nielsen along through their periodic salvos in the New York Times?

In any case, the stabilization of TV usage levels was really just a sideshow compared to even bigger Nielsen news that was buried in last week's announcement of a joint venture between Nielsen, AGB, and WPP's Kantar Media Research unit. Has it occurred to anyone else what's going on here? Does anyone notice how Nielsen is taking out some of its potentially greatest competitors via a series of joint-venture agreements? Does anyone remember that AGB was the U.K. ratings outfit that came close to launching a rival service here in the states? Or that another Nielsen collaborator, Arbitron, competed with Nielsen in local TV ratings and threatened a rival national TV ratings service (ScanAmerica)? If this seems like a random association, consider that Nielsen also has an arrangement with another former TV ratings rival - R.D. Percy Co. - to utilize that company's technology in its new outdoor audience measurement system. Need more proof of Nielsen's creeping JV strategy? Look no farther than just north of the border, where Nielsen is combining operations with its greatest rival, BBM Canada.

In fact, just about the only serious Nielsen rival not to hook up with the VNU subsidiary is Knowledge Networks/SRI, and it seems to us that SRI founder Gale Metzger, who mounted the most serious threat to Nielsen's TV ratings sovereignty during his years of work with CONTAM and SMART, may be the last remaining competitive voice out there. Then again, there are those folks at U.K.-based Taylor Nelson Sofres, who own a small-time Nielsen rival, CMR, which have yet to really leverage their position in the U.S. marketplace.