NEW YORK -- Taking one step closer to eventually abolishing sweeps, Nielsen Media Research announced plans Monday to install People Meters in the top 10 U.S. markets.
People Meters -- which report demographic data on a daily basis -- have been used on a national level since 1987, but local markets still rely on old-fashioned diaries to record demo ratings.
To get demographic numbers, TV stations and cable systems have to wait for the sweep periods, when the members of a representative sample of households agree to fill out diaries listing the programs they watched during the month.
Those diary samples are taken four times a year, during November, February, May and July.
That's why the broadcast webs load up on specials during those months and local newscasts schedule exposes of subjects like teenage prostitution and Internet porn. Sweeps ratings allow stations to mark up their advertising rates for as long as three months.
But with People Meters, Nielsen will be able to publish full demographic data for all of the stations in a given market within 24 hours. Now, passive meters allow only a raw household rating 24 hours later.
Nielsen wired Boston with People Meters last year, and will now add nine more cities, starting with Los Angeles, which will be up and running by early 2004.
Net execs have complained about sweeps for years, but the high cost of installing People Meters in all 212 TV markets made the issue moot. Even after the 10 top markets are installed, sweeps will still be necessary in the other 202 markets.
Nielsen was emboldened to expand its local People Meter scope after the company signed NBC, ABC, Comcast, Time Warner Cable of both New York and Los Angeles and the L.A.-based cable-system interconnect Adlink to help shoulder the multimillion-dollar cost.
Nielsen is now pitching other clients -- such as CBS, Fox and Tribune -- to come aboard, using as its main lure the fact that it will install more People Meters than passive meters in the top 10. Boston, for example, went from 420 to 600 homes, and New York will shoot up from 540 to 800.
And not only will the number of Nielsen homes rise, separately, in each market, but the national sample will go up from 5,000 to 7,000 households. For the first time, Nielsen will be able to use the same local household as a representative sample for both national and local numbers.
A bigger sample will increase the accuracy of the rating, particularly for a cable network that pulls in far fewer viewers on average than a broadcast network.
Nielsen said that the top 10 markets encompass 32 million TV homes, or 30% of the U.S. total. In local billing alone, advertisers pony up $8 billion in the top 10, according to Nielsen.
After Los Angeles, Nielsen plans to add three more cities in 2004: New York, Chicago and San Francisco. In 2005, four more cities kick in: Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit and Dallas. Atlanta will get its People Meters in 2006.
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