Nielsen Adds TV Meters To 140 Markets With Paper Diaries
- by Wayne Friedman , May 16, 2017
Those homes, in 140 markets, are part of Nielsen’s plan to start up electronic measurement in all 210 local TV markets. The meters will also “address the limitations of solely using set-top-box data for audience measurement in local TV markets.”
For years, TV researchers and analysts have complained about the accuracy of paper diaries where panelists enter specific viewing information. Additionally, Nielsen says more recent data from pay TV providers set-top box is lacking.
Kelly Abcarian, SVP of Nielsen Product Leadership, stated: “We’ve made great strides to incorporate data from set-top-boxes into our local TV measurement, however, in that process we’ve uncovered significant challenges with the data.”
She added: “To solve these limitations, especially measuring growing audiences viewing via over-the-air broadcast, we looked at multiple solutions, including online recruited panels and quick-query surveys.”
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But ultimately, she said, Nielsen “proven” results from its longtime TV meters was the solution.
Nielsen says as of February 2017, more than 25% of viewing to broadcast stations in the 140 markets measured by diaries came from over-the-air tuning. The market with the highest level was at 50% over-the-air.
The TV audience meters will be installed not only in homes with pay TV set-top boxes, but also those viewing through via over-the-air broadcast.
To “capture all in-market tuning,” Nielsen says it will also include viewing from homes across those 140 markets using diaries for measurement that contribute to Nielsen’s National People Meter panel.
Nielsen says “the meters will also serve to validate set-top-box data by serving as the truth-set that is used to compare against and deliver actual persons-level viewing.”
Adding about a 100 of these "metered" homes per market is basically a bandaid that is a weak first step to fixing the small market TV rating mess. You need a lot more per market and the ongoing dilema is that the stations are not prepared or, for those operating in the red, unable to pay Nielsen what it costs to meterize their home areas with proper sized samples. I'm not blaming Nielsen, which is faced with a lose, lose situation in these markets. The solution is probably to team up with a set-top-box set usage supplier, do some serious sample balancing to try to make the findings so0mewhat projectable and forget about viewer measurements in these cities----for the time being.
Ed-- it looks like 50 HHs a market to me. 7K / 140.
It's not clear from the press release, but the meters are being added on top of relatively large numbers of set top box/return path data homes in these diary markets. (I hesitate to call a number of set top boxes a sample!) . Overall this is a plus. Interesting finding on the higher than expected amount of over the air broadcast viewing - would like to hear more on how Nielsen determined this.
Josh, you are right. I was using the 15,000 number, not 7,000. Makes it look even worse---doesn't it?,
Tim, Nielsen has indicated from time to time that so-called cord cutters do a fair amount of over-the-air broadcast network and local station viewing, hence the notion that they can't be reached at all by traditional TV advertisers is rather misleading. I, too, would like to see a more detailed report on this and I assume that it is based on national meter findings which can capture over-the-air reception.