• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 23, 2007

In a move that has big implications for local TV audience measurement, Nielsen Media Research has abandoned plans to create a new, state-of-the-art version of its so-called people meters, and will instead incorporate some of the features it had been developing - including a new infrared technology for tracking TV viewing sources - into its current meters.

The new meters were being developed specifically to measure TV viewing in the nation's mid-size TV markets - markets ranked 26 to 60 - but Nielsen said it has abandoned that plan and will instead equip those markets with the same version of meters it currently uses in the nation's largest markets. Nielsen said the decision will ensure that all of the top 60 markets - ones represent more than 80 million U.S. TV households - are utilizing the same TV metering technology.

"It will have the ability to use infrared technology for source detection, which will simplify the installation process and potentially improve acceptance rates among target households," Nielsen CEO Susan Whiting said in a letter sent to clients this week.

Exactly how the new technology would simplify that process was not spelled out, but it is well known that Nielsen's field staff has frequently found it difficult to convince some households - especially those with high-end TV sets - to allow its technicians to open the sets up and have them hard-wired to Nielsen's older meters.

Whiting hailed the integration of metering technology in the nation's largest markets and its national TV ratings sample, and said progress was also being made to bring electronic measurement into even smaller markets via a new "mailable" meter. Based on results of a test in 46 Tampa area households, Whiting said Nielsen has learned that the acceptance of the mailable meters was "quite good," but did not indicate when Nielsen might actually deploy the method in its ratings sample.

All of these developments are related to Nielsen's broader "Anytime, Anywhere" measurement initiative, which also includes plans to create an integrated TV and online measurement panel. Whiting said that Nielsen's efforts to recruit households for the integrated panel found that "about 50%" of existing TV households had agreed to accept Internet measurement, as well, and that those that declined cited "privacy" issues as their reason.

About a third of the homes in the TV sample were also proven to be "ineligible" for Internet measurement, because they either didn't have a PC, or were not connected to the Internet, or because the operating system of their computers were too old and incompatible with Nielsen's metering system.