The Melting Blog

Protesting Nielsen's People Meters

Today's weekly LPM news comes to us from Chi-town, where the President of Nielsen Media Research President, Susan Whiting, has marched straight into the lion's den (you'd think) in speaking at the 2004 Black Consumer Research and Advertising Summit. Here's some highlights from her discussion in today's Chicago Tribune report:

"In 62 years of our business, we've never had anyone attack our business this way," said Whiting, who singled out Fox and News Corp. for fueling what she called a "News Corp. owned and operated controversy."

Whiting chalked up Fox's and Univision's objections to financial concerns.

"Fox was particularly unhappy with some big declines that they were seeing in ratings for some of their shows under the people meter," she said, citing "The Parkers," a sitcom with African-American themes, as an example. "As a result, they accused Nielsen of undercounting people of color, organized a group called the Don't Count Us Out coalition and funded them to a fare-thee-well."

Apparently, the fireworks weren't even inside the conference. They were outside -- where protestors were picketing Whiting and Nielsen at the entrance of the Wyndam Hotel. Now if you still aren't convinced that this whole controversy is something cooked up by Fox News Corp., you'd have to at least admit that the following exchange is a bit, how should we say, fishy:

Almost all of the protesters wore pins bearing the name of The Woodlawn Organization, a South Side community group led by Rev. Leon Finney. When one protester was asked why he opposed Nielsen's meters, Patrick O'Connor, an employee of Jasculca/Terman, a public relations firm, intervened, saying, "You probably want to wait for Finney to get here--he's a little more well-versed."

Truly laughable. One interesting thing to note about Rev. Finney is that he chaired Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign back in 1988. Which raises the question: where is Jesse? Isn't this his hometown? Isn't he the seasoned veteran of these kinds of corporate shakedowns -- most infamously in the case of Toyota and Texaco? Well, astonishingly, Jesse Jackson thinks this whole matter is a bogus issue too:

Earlier this week at the Rainbow PUSH conference the reverend Jesse Jackson broke ranks with some other civil rights leaders and announced his support for the Nielsen plan. -- "Reverend Jesse Jackson has a right to have an opinion. We do not share that opinion," Rev. Finney said.

Like I said, never boring! More to follow...

Posted by thomas at July 1, 2004 12:33 PM | TrackBack