• by May 26, 2004

NIELSEN FINDS IT CAN'T FIGHT CITY HALL, EVEN IF YOU'RE WEARING BOXER SHORTS - Lately, Nielsen execs have gotten used to airing their dirty laundry in public settings, but they probably never imagined they'd be forced to testify at a New York City Council hearing that also addressed the sale of used underwear in the Big Apple. "Er, are those your legal briefs? Nah, they're just boxers." The hearing, which was convened Tuesday by the council's subcommittee on consumer affairs, was the latest stop on Nielsen's local people meter campaign trail and given the number of visits they've been making to municipal and federal lawmakers, the Nielsen team is feeling more like lobbyists than media researchers. Those whistleblower stops have covered New York, Los Angeles and Capital Hill, with a likely stop soon in the Windy City, which is set to be LPM-ed in August.

The problem, says a Nielsen insider, is "we're being beat five to one. Every time we show up in someone's office they tell us they've already had five visits from 'them.'" The them, says the insider, are invariably referred to as either the "Fox people," or the "News Corp. guys." And while Nielsen isn't in the traffic auditing business - at least not yet - the executive described the foot traffic of the anti-LPM lobbying team as "moderate in Los Angeles, heavy in New York and unbelievable in Washington."

One thing Nielsen hasn't seen much of as the June 3rd date for the delayed launch of its New York people meters approaches, is any advertising from Fox, or the Don't Count Us Out advocacy group. And it's unclear whether a paid media blitz will heat up again. Alex Nogalez, head of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and one of the chief spokesmen for DCUO, told the Riff the group's advertising budget is tapped, though it would welcome a new infusion of capital from a benefactor.

Meanwhile, Nielsen has quietly been waging its own advertising effort in the Latino and African American press in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, in an effort to offset the media blitzes conducted by DCUO, and to convince minorities to cooperate with the LPM sample recruitment.

If she had her druthers, that's exactly what Ceril Shagrin would be doing, too.

"If I could do it, I would take out full-page ads telling Hispanics and African Americans, 'If you want to make yourself counted, then any time any research company asks you participate, say yes.' That's what we need to do as an industry."

Shagrin, who is senior vice president-corporate research of Spanish-language broadcaster Univision, has been oddly silent on the debate surrounding the rollout of Nielsen's local people meters, which Latino and African American groups and Fox have alleged are biased against people of color.

Shagrin, who has decided to go public on the topic in a series of briefings this week, including one with the Riff, says that's not so, that "people meters are a better data collection tool than the diary," but that Univision definitely does have some concerns with the representation of Nielsen's local people meter panels in New York and possibly the other big ethnically diverse markets it will be rolling out in. While Nielsen has done a good job of bringing its New York sample into balance with the overall proportion of Hispanics in the city, Shagrin says there are some issues "below the surface" that are still a concern for the Spanish-language programmer. It's not how many Hispanic households are in the sample, she says, but the type. By in large, Nielsen has too many smaller-size Hispanic family households (one and two member homes vs. the larger member households she says are the norm for the market) and far too many Hispanic households where Spanish is not the primary or only language spoken. The combination of those two factors, she says, may greatly distort the representativeness of the sample and the ultimate outcome of ratings, especially for a network that programs only in Spanish.

"Basically, we've said we will live with the ratings, whatever they are, as long as they get the sample right," says Shagrin.

Nielsen, however, says that may never happen. At least not from the satisfaction of Univision's point-of-view.

"At the end of the day we may not be able to do it well enough to satisfy the needs of Univision," acknowledges Nielsen spokesman Jack Loftus, noting that the goal of Nielsen's national and local general market TV surveys is to get the balance of Hispanics right from a "general market sample," not in terms of the nuances of an Hispanic market sample. In fact, that is why Nielsen, with backing from companies like Univision and Telemundo, created its Hispanic market samples.

"We acknowledge that we have to do better in that category. The question is how far we have to go," says Loftus, noting that it is just as and maybe even more important from a general market point-of-view that Nielsen get the right composition of other under-represented demographic groups, such as men 18-34, households with children and households wired for cable.

But Shagrin, a former top Nielsen exec, who actually helped develop its Hispanic ratings samples, says it is critical that Nielsen get the Big Apple sample right, because "New York may be the tip of the iceberg."

"If Nielsen goes ahead and launches New York with a known bias in the audience estimates, there is no reason to believe they would not do the same thing when they get to Los Angeles with an even larger penetration of Hispanics," she asserts. "Ultimately, they all go into the national service."

Shagrin says Univision so far has chosen to work with Nielsen "behind the scenes" and has opted to stay out of the public Nielsen-bashing that has prompted a Congressional investigation in the matter, but if what the Riff hears about Univision's next move is correct, we won't be surprised if some members of Nielsen's legal team will need to clean their shorts.