• by October 1, 2004

REAL NIELSEN RANTS -- The Riff would like to take this opportunity to officially announce a name change. From this moment on, we will no longer be known as "Real Media Riffs" (as if we've ever had any fake ones?). You can now call us "Real Nielsen Rants" (from what we can tell, there are no fake ones).

Okay, we're just kidding. Besides, "The Rant" just doesn't have the same ring in the first-person plural. It just sounds personal. And we're plural. But one thing we're not joking about is the need for greater scrutiny than ever about Nielsen's methods, business practices, intentions, and especially, its market influence.

We know we're not alone. We've been hearing some powerful rumblings from some powerful sources about that need, and we wouldn't be surprised if you saw MediaDailyNews reporting on some of those developments in the very near future. Ah, but we get ahead of ourselves.

What today's rant, er riff, is about, is some specific developments that transpired this week that deserve a little more attention than the normal, 'Oh no, there they go again' Nielsen whining. If we're not mistaken, we've detected some new impetus from Nielsen and its parent VNU. Just to remind you, here they are (and the reasons they deserve your heightened awareness):

1) Nielsen Monday informed clients that beginning in October 2005, it would make new data available that would enable clients to analyze actual minute-by-minute ratings data. (We're told this is a good thing, though it will come at an incremental market cost that some Nielsen clients consider "predatory," given Nielsen's monopolistic control over the data, which they feel they've already paid for once.)

2) On Wednesday, MediaDailyNews reported about a Nielsen client meeting - something Nielsen executives refer to as a "roundtable" - at which Nielsen executives revealed an aggressive rollout scenario for portable people meters into 50 markets (11 through 60). That is assuming Nielsen and Arbitron's Houston tests of the promising new meters prove successful and the companies gain enough market support to move forward with their joint venture. (From what we can tell, this was mostly a good thing, but raised serious questions about Nielsen's commitment to local people meters in the top 10 markets.)

3) On Wednesday, Nielsen issued a "Media Advisory" asserting that a MediaDailyNews story was "inaccurate" and posted a statement on its Web site under the erroneous banner "MediaPost: Correction." It was erroneous, because MediaPost never corrected it. It wasn't wrong. Nielsen executives have subsequently confirmed that clients were briefed on that scenario and have pulled the statement from their Web site. (We think it was bad that Nielsen attempted to misrepresent our coverage and stated that we did not seek to confirm the story with Nielsen (we did, they did), but we're glad they've acknowledged their mistake.)

4) On Wednesday, Nielsen parent VNU announced plans with Arbitron to explore the development of a national "single-source" panel that would measure product sales and media usage based on Arbitron's portable people meters. (We think that's great.)

5) On Thursday, Nielsen announced a deal with DirecTV to incorporate some of the satellite TV company's TiVo subscribers into an existing TiVo panel Nielsen and TiVo are offering as a new syndicated research service. (This has some good to it, but mostly is seen as an area of acute concern regarding Nielsen's dominance of the TV data market.)

6) On Friday, Merrill Lynch released a report indicating that Nielsen parent VNU had amassed a "war chest" of more than $1 billion to acquire media and marketing research companies. The report identifies Arbitron and Mediamark Research Inc. as likely targets. (Good if you're VNU, or maybe one of its acquisitions. Bad if you're someone trying to compete with or buy data from an organization that already controls 86 percent of the media measurement marketplace in the U.S., according to Merrill Lynch.)

Taken separately, each of these would be a significant development worth keeping an eye on. Looking at them as a whole and considering that they happened in a span of five business days raises them to a level that the Department of Homeland Security undoubtedly would classify as at least "Code Orange."