• by July 25, 2005

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO BE COUNTED IN? -- On Wednesday, Congress will hold hearings on bills that would create a law regulating the TV ratings business. Like the debate leading up to it, opinions about the proposed legislation are pretty much drawn along partisan lines: Nielsen and its supporters oppose it; anti-Nielsen forces such as Don't Count Us Out are in favor of it. Where do you stand? Like both Nielsen and DCUO, the Riff would like to your vote to count. To do so, please take a few minutes to complete this brief survey on the proposed legislation, TV ratings in general, and Nielsen Media Research in particular. Your responses will be kept strictly confidential, but overall findings of the poll will be published Wednesday morning in MediaPost's MediaDailyNews.

Meanwhile, after a week of flurrying press releases, here's how we've been keeping score:

Opponents:

The Independent Task Force on Television Measurement
The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, founder and president, Rainbow Push Coalition
Marc Morial, president-CEO, National Urban League
Representative Diane Watson (CA)
Dorothy Height, chair-Executive Committee, National Council of Negro Women
Warrington Hudlin, black independent filmmaker
Debra Lee, president-COO, BET
Johnathan Rodgers, president-CEO, TV One
Don Jackson, founder, chairman-CEO, Central City Productions Inc.
Byron Lewis, chairman-CEO, Uniworld Group
Lawrence Parks, chair, Potomac Coalition
Charles Thurston, president, Comcast Spotlight
Michael Sherman, general manager, KTSF-TV, San Francisco
Bill Imada, president, Asian American Advertising Federation
Manuel Machado, past chairman, Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies
Robert Hyland, president, Television Una Vez Mas, Azteca America Affiliate Group

Proponents:

Fox Television
Tribune
Albritton Communications
Gannett
Don't Count Us Out
National Association of Broadcasters
erinMedia

By our count, that gives the opposition a 16-to-7 lead over proponents of the bill, though simple arithmetic doesn't tell the whole story. Some of the votes are more telling than others. Nielsen's assemblage of community rights leaders is impressive and appears to veto DCUO's own minority voice. But the influence of it's so-called independent task force is questionable, as many outsiders see it as a Nielsen-funded organization.

Conversely, you have to cancel out the votes of News Corp., and DCUO. But the support of the NAB, and independent broadcasters, illustrates that this is not simply a News Corp. issue. Another interesting supporter is erinMedia, the upstart TV ratings firm that is suing Nielsen over alleged antitrust violations. That erinMedia would support something that would regulate Nielsen is no surprise. That it would support legislation that would regulate TV ratings providers is.

But the biggest surprise of all, is the deafening silence from some important stakeholders who depend on the TV ratings business for $60 billion worth of TV advertising buys. Yep, advertisers, agencies, and the trade associations that represent them have yet to weigh in on the subject.

In a press release, Nielsen also cited several editorials from influential trade publications such as Broadcasting & Cable and TelevisionWeek magazines, but not surprisingly, omitted the Riff.