• by Paul Gough , January 13, 2003

The true digital invasion hasn’t yet hit but that doesn’t mean that Nielsen Media Research isn’t getting ready.

The New York-based media monitoring service is preparing for the challenges of monitoring digital TV, most recently purchasing an Israeli company’s products to help them catch all digital transmissions when they start to gain a foothold in the nation’s TV viewing. Although digital TV is already here in cable, satellite and broadcast, most TVs nationwide use a set-top box that converts the digital signal into something analog TVs can tune. It’s that conversion process that allows Nielsen Media Research to monitor digital television use in sample households.

But when more purely digital TVs are sold and gain market share, Nielsen won’t be able to use that method anymore. So they’ve developed a new way, called the Media Monitoring System. In each of the 210 DMAs Nielsen surveys, the new system will be able to track TV and cable broadcasts. It’s crucial to the Media Monitoring System (and Nielsen’s products) because if a digital code is misapplied or nonexistent, it could upset Nielsen’s tallies of viewing. The Media Monitoring System provides a backup key to Nielsen’s future data gathering because it provides an independent record of digital signals.

Nielsen Media Research spokesman Jack Loftus said the new system doesn’t affect the way things are done now because most household TVs haven’t so far made the jump to pure digital TV.

“It’s a new metering system designed for digital TV, designed for a time when broadcasters and cable are distributing digital signals to homes with digital television sets. The country’s not there yet. It’s headed in that direction, but it’s not there yet,” he said.

Nielsen’s current metering system is doing well for now but Loftus said the company didn’t want to wait until it was too late to prepare. Although it’s a small number of total television households right now, the pace will quicken and provide an ever larger number of digital households among the analog world.

“It’ll change gradually. It will be a hybrid world for a while,” he said.

This week, Nielsen announced it was purchasing digital receiver cards from Optibase Inc. of Mountainview, Calif., and Herzliya, Israel, for its monitoring stations.

“With the drop in prices of digital television and the increased digital TV services being offered to consumers, it is only a matter of time before there is widespread penetration of digital technology. By using the DTA-101 digital TV receiver for its new monitoring service, Nielsen’s forward-thinking initiative will enable the company to keep up with the ever-changing broadcasting technology,” said Greg Eisips, president of Optibase Inc.