• by Joe Mandese , June 4, 2004

Following a contentious two-and-a-half-hour meeting Thursday afternoon at CBS' famed Black Rock building in New York, an embattled TV committee of the Media Rating Council failed to reach any consensus on how the industry watchdog should deal with the impact of a spate of TV ads attacking Nielsen's ratings in four of the largest markets, or whether to somehow censure the member -- News Corp. -- that has been funding it.

"If we don't censure it, what does it mean for any local stations or TV outlet that wants to do something unusual to stack the deck in their favor," one MRC committee member told MediaDailyNews, adding that while many members were outraged by the TV ad campaign placed by advocacy group Don't Count Us Out (DCUO), but paid for by News Corp., they weren't sure how to deal with it.

The likely outcome, said another committee member participating in the meeting, would be a tepid statement that is expected to be issued publicly by the MRC. Few doubted the council would take any material action on the incident, which many consider an egregious violation of industry rules, and quite possibly Nielsen ratings contracts. It also was unclear how much impact the TV ads, which ran through the end of the day Thursday as part of planned media strategy, might have had on TV ratings in those markets - New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, DC, or on the national TV ratings.

"As far as I'm concerned, this is like the Valdez. What they are doing is polluting the water for all of us," said one of the committee members, none of who could speak for attribution due to the MRC's stringent non-disclosure rules.

A person familiar with the DCUO media plan, said it called for a "pause" at the of the day Thursday, to assess its impact, but the organization is prepared to ramp it up again at a moments notice, and could quite possibly launch a second round of ads focusing specifically on the Washington Beltway.

The MRC meeting, meanwhile, followed a day in which some influential Congressmen are believed to have reached out to MRC executive director George Ivie to put pressure on him to resolve the matter that precipitated the TV ad campaign, Nielsen's decision to move forward with local people meters despite failing to meet the standards of an MRC audit of the system.. The House Judiciary Committee is said to be reviewing the matter and whether the federal government should get directly involved. The MRC was created in the 1960s following Congressional hearings investigating the infamous game show scandals as a way for the TV industry to self-regulate itself.

Nielsen, meanwhile, continues to lose support form influential clients on its decision to move forward with the local people meters in New York, as well as its decision to continue produce ratings from its older meter/diary system in the market for another three months. On Thursday, Tribune Co. joined CBS, Univision and News Corp. in calling on Nielsen to pull the local people meters in New York until issues concerning its sample composition can be resolved.