Nielsen this morning announced its first significant deal wit ha major cable operator to begin commercializing audience viewing data from digital set-top devices as a potential TV ratings service.
Nielsen said the deal with Charter Communications would provide anonymous set-top box viewing data from almost 330,000 households in the Los Angeles area, which Nielsen will develop into commercially
available analyses and reports of digital television viewership. The move follows a similar rollout by Nielsen rival TNS, which has already commercialized a service with a cable operator in Los
Angeles, and which has announced plans to develop a 100,000 household set-top database service with satellite TV giant DirecTV.
