People Meters will end TV sweeps

The technology is already in some major markets.
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
It's November, and we're all doomed. In other words, it's time for the fall sweeps, when TV networks, and local stations, try to fatten their ratings by luring viewers with a buffet of stunts, such as "Category 7: The End of the World," a special-effects-loaded tale of planetary havoc in two parts starting Sunday on CBS.
The networks call this "event programming," and there will be plenty of it between now and Nov. 30, when Nielsen Media Research, the ratings company, "sweeps" most of the country. As it does four times a year, the company helps local stations set ad rates by collecting viewers' paper diaries that yield detailed information about who's watching what.
Technology is expected to eventually kill off sweeps -- including those "special investigations" viewers have come to expect quarterly on the late local news -- thanks to the introduction of electronic Local People Meters in various markets. But don't expect to be free of those newscast exposes.
News shows
While network sweeps stunts continue, their influence will continue to spill over into local news shows, where grainy video of sexual activity in public restrooms and investigations of exploding cell phones have become standards, along with reporters in hospital gowns getting medical tests. However, few journalists are likely to go as far as Cleveland anchor Sharon Reed. She got naked for a first-person report last November on a nude group-photo installation.
In the long run, the meters will do away with quarterly gimmickry. Because they measure viewing habits continuously and transmit voluminous data electronically every night, the meters will make sweeps obsolete.
In the short run, local stations in cities with meters are grappling with how to do news now.
The meters "are so new to local markets that a lot of people are still trying to figure them out," said Kerry Kielar, director of communications for Nielsen.
Phasing out diaries
The devices themselves aren't new; Nielsen has used them for years to measure national viewing trends. What's new is their local application.
Until recently, Nielsen relied on the 100,000 paper diaries distributed nationally during sweeps periods to find out what audiences in individual markets preferred.
The company started rolling out the meters in 2002 in Boston. They are now in seven locations, including Philadelphia, which got the first of its 850 meters this summer. The other markets are Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington. Next year, Detroit and Dallas-Fort Worth are scheduled to get meters, followed in 2007 by Atlanta.
That will take care of the top-10 TV markets. But out in the vast heartland, Nielsen still measures audiences the old-fashioned way, passing out paper diaries in November, February, May and July to selected viewers and asking them to faithfully record what they watch.
So long as a large swath of the TV audience is measured that way, networks will likely remain wedded to the idea of scheduling their showiest stuff during sweeps.
Undercounting minorities?
The rollout of the meters has not been glitch-free. Critics have questioned the accuracy of the devices, saying they undercount minority viewers.
In February 2004, Nielsen had a dress rehearsal in New York, distributing meters to some participants, diaries to others. In side-by-side comparisons, metered viewership declined 27 percent to 62 percent for UPN shows with black casts, including "Girlfriends," "Eve," "Half & amp; Half" and "The Parkers." Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owns the Fox TV network and numerous local stations, including the UPN affiliate in New York, protested that the meter results were flawed.
Nielsen postponed the full New York launch until June 2004, while a coalition called Don't Count Us Out, supported by minority members of Congress and partly financed by News Corp., called for hearings.
That fight lost a lot of steam when cable's Black Entertainment Network and the Rev. Jesse Jackson endorsed the meters, after a side-by-side comparison of New York viewers in March 2004 showed BET's over-18 daytime viewership was up 180 percent.
While acknowledging that the meters aren't perfect, Nielsen says they are more accurate than a coffee-stained paper diary in which a viewer has recorded what he remembers watching, or even what he thinks he should have watched instead of what he actually saw.
The meters have their drawbacks -- a viewer must push a button on a remote at regular intervals. But that's easier than remembering to write everything down in the diary.