• by Joe Mandese , October 11, 2007

It wouldn't be the start of a new television season if there wasn't a major dust-up or two. This year, there's been more like three or four. For today's TV Board post, I'd like to focus on just one: The spectacle surrounding Nielsen's decision to liberalize, then revoke its ratings reprocessing rules governing how multiple airings of the same network TV show can be reported.

There's already been plenty written about the controversy surrounding the Nielsen changes, and the super-human speed with which NBC exploited the short-lived loophole to goose the "net" rating of the season premiere of "Heroes." But if you cock your ear, crane your neck and listen very, very closely, I promise you'll detect the real explanation for the reaction. You'll have to strain to hear it, because it's almost imperceptible, and no, it's not the hush intonations of, "Save the cheerleader, save the world." It's something more like, "Save the linear programming schedule, save our world."

At least that's what I swear I could hear muffled underneath some of the protests uttered over the past couple of weeks.

Surely, there were plenty of reasons to criticize the Nielsen move -- not the least of which, was the inequity it created among broadcasters and cable programmers, who were not able to take advantage of the loophole. But as I've already said, I'm not here to weigh in on that one. I'm much more interested in the other explanation people gave for objecting to the move: that by omitting the rating for the initial telecast of "Heroes," Nielsen created a black hole in the TV schedule that would make it impossible for agencies, advertisers and networks to compare the relative performance with other shows in the same timeslot or on the same night. That's absolutely true, but my question is, who cares?

Well, I know the answer to that, and I know I'm probably going to lose some points with some good friends with this follow-up question, but I feel compelled to blurt it anyway: Why should you care?

Let me assure you, this is not some ploy to generate reply posts on today's TV Board blog. It's something I've been thinking about long and hard for quite some time. And to their credit, it's something I know Nielsen executives also have been thinking about as they migrate toward their A2/M2 vision of the television - make that video - vision of the nonlinear world of digital content on demand.

Don't get me wrong, I understand human nature, and I understand why people - even really smart people - are going to cling to the notion of a linear programming schedule as long as they possibly can. But I'm here to tell you once and for all, it's over. The schedule is an anachronism. It's an artifact. It's a quaint, nostalgic symbol we hold in our head, like the image of a youthful Brandon Tartikoff hovering in front of a brightly colored, nightly checkerboard, or an issue of TV Guide.

C'mon. I mean, even daily newspapers are dropping TV schedules from their pages. And how forward-thinking are they?

Hey, I don't blame you. It's what we've been schooled in. It's how we think about television. It's the way we calculate the prospects of one show vs. another. But it's also a completely linear way of thinking about something that no longer is linear - which is, the way people actually watch television.

Don't get me wrong. I know we're making progress. We finally took a meaningful baby step and recognized DVRs, and time-shifting (though we still haven't figured out how to account for VCRs, but that's another column). But the real issue is that TV increasingly is a non-linear medium that can be experienced:

1) Time-shifted via VCRs.

2) Time-shifted via DVRs.

3) Time-shifted via VOD.

4) Place- and time-shifted via Slingbox.

5) Place- and time-shifted via broadband video downloads to a wide range of personal communications devices (PC, iPod, MP3 player, PSP, etc.).

6) Place- and time-shifted via various videogame consoles, especially Microsoft's Xbox. 7) Place-shifted in the air via various in-flight deals like JetBlue and DirecTV.

8) Place-shifted on the ground via various out-of-home video networks.

I could go on, but you get the point. And I know what some of you are likely to say: That despite all these options, the vast majority of television viewing is still a linear experience. To which I would rejoin: Is it really? How do you really know? Think about the sources those assumptions are derived from. Do we really have any system in place that could possibly tell us how people are actually consuming media - especially video - across platforms? I don't think so.

Nielsen says it is building one, and is in the throes of integrating measurement systems, building new ones, and changing rules and methods of processing to give us a clearer picture. Some of those moves are controversial. Some of them undoubtedly are not the best methods. But at least Nielsen is looking at the big picture of the small screen. And the recent change in its reprocessing rules was a step in that direction. A poorly thought out one, granted. But an attempt to start looking at, and processing, television audience estimates the way audiences are actually watching television. And the truth is, this has little, if anything, to do with programming schedules.