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Well, that's not the way things turned out. Sure, there are all sorts of good people on the task force--Conde Nast research mensch Scott MacDonald, for one. And yes, the task force is chaired by chaired by former Congresswoman Cardiss Collins of Illinois, and is comprised of community leaders whom we believe have nothing but the best intentions for TV audience measurement in mind. Plus it's got Sulu--or at least the actor George Takei, who portrayed Sulu on "Star Trek"--a show that, ironically, was canceled before any task forces could explore the final frontier: Nielsen ratings.
That's all great. But we could never help shaking the feeling that, for all the good souls, smart thinkers and objective sensibilities involved in the task force, somehow Nielsen was really pulling the strings behind the scenes. That certainly seemed to be the case when the task force, after months of anguish over arcane research methods like "fault rates," finally issued its report and recommendation on what Nielsen should actually do to fix problems in minority audience measurement. The report was released not by some neutral, third-party entity, but by Nielsen itself, which promoted the report on its Web sites, issued press releases and spun the findings like mad. That in itself should have been a really big red flag.
Not that the recommendations were bad, mind you. They were hardly anything anyone could object to, even if they were a little soft and mushy. But not nearly as mushy as Nielsen's response to the recommendations, which was essentially to nod its massive head and say, "We'll take it under advisement." Actually, it said something that was more like, "Gee, these are really neat ideas. Why don't we run it by our clients and see what they say." That, of course, is the ultimate dodge, because nobody knows better than Nielsen that its clients can never seem to agree about anything. Actually, they always seem to agree on one thing. But we're not going to actually spell out what that is, for fear that people might think we're bashing Nielsen once again. Honestly, we're trying not to, but we can't just sit here, smack our head and say, "Doh!" every time Nielsen co-opts another introspection of Nielsen's methods. The bump already is putting so much pressure on our frontal lobe that we find ourselves getting dizzy, disoriented, and end up ranting about things like this, wondering if anyone else even cares at all.
You know, the sad truth is, we don't even blame Nielsen. We actually think they're really smart for doing what they're doing. Who could blame them? They were caught so off guard by the dirty tricks of their clandestine opposition that they simply had to respond in kind. But fellas, give us a little respect and at least try and be clandestine about it. Because your fingerprints and paychecks are all over this one.