• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 10, 2004

Nielsen, which is pushing ahead with a controversial plan to begin reporting TV ratings from households with digital video recorders (DVR) beginning in the spring of 2005, Tuesday unveiled a surprising component of its strategy: a plan to use a paper-based technique - diaries - to measure recording and playback of digital recordings in most U.S. TV markets.

Speaking during the Television Bureau of Advertising's annual research symposium, Nielsen executives said they were testing an "eight-day diary" in DVR households to collect playback of digitally recorded programming.

Larry Patterson, senior vice president-operations at Nielsen Media Research, told the TV station executives that details of the plan would be released soon in a new client notice, but that the company is still wrestling with what is the appropriate time intervals for asking the diary households to recollect their DVR playback. In Nielsen's metered markets, which include the biggest television markets, new Nielsen meters will capture all DVR playback on a daily basis. The DVR portion would be stripped out of daily "overnight" reports, which would feature ratings only for programs that were viewed "live." At the end of each week, Nielsen plans to reissue a revised rating combining both the "live" and DVR data.

Patterson said initial tests have found it is difficult to get diary households to fill out the data on a 24-hour basis, so the company has opted to test the eight-day diary instead. The plan underscores what is emerging as a new kind of "digital divide" between the nation's largest markets and the smaller ones, which historically have had to rely on less sophisticated diaries for ratings data. It also raises serious questions about the efficacy of paper diaries for measuring something as dynamic as digital TV viewing.

But the issue of properly measuring smaller TV markets has always been one of economics, and Nielsen executives said they were also exploring other means of improving research in the smaller markets, including an inexpensive "electronic diary" that would be sent and returned via mail.

Nielsen's Patterson underscored the growing disparity between larger and smaller TV markets, noting that Nielsen's own tracking research indicates bigger markets tend to have higher penetration of DVRs. While Nielsen estimates the U.S. average penetration is now between 4 and 5 percent, he said that "in some markets it's pushing 10 percent." Specifically, he cited Las Vegas, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin and other "Western" markets, where he said the "socio-economic makeup" and lifestyles made them more prone to new media technologies like DVRs.

Meanwhile, the plan to use paper diaries to measure viewing of digitally recorded TV programming raises other questions, including how and whether such methods could possibly account for so-called "trick" viewing features such as slow-motion, fast-forward, pause and repeated replays that can occur on a second-by-second basis. In fact, while Nielsen will have the capability of measuring those features in its electronic meters, Patterson said Nielsen initially will not report that data in its DVR ratings beginning next spring.

Nielsen plans to begin reporting DVR ratings in local set-meter markets beginning April 7, 2005, in local diary markets in May 2005 and in its local people meter and national TV ratings samples on Aug. 29, 2005.