The Melting Blog

People Meters Are Back

For nearly the entire month of June and a good chunk of July, this blog had discovered a new religion: a crusade to exploit the anti-People Meter campaign as a bastion of lies and deceit concocted by a powerful media conglomerate -- one News Corp -- under the guise of grassroots community opposition. Essentially, the tools of identity politics were used as a way to rue liberal rage among minorities populations -- in order to stop a new audience measurement technology. Fox played the race card basically.

The issue over whether Nielsen's new measuring technology undercounts minority households really captured my fancy because a number of issues intersect under TMB concern: ethnic media, ethnic media representation, and the debate over the right methodology in researching ethnic minority households (though I'm sure this latter subject really only dazzles the geek contingent). As an ethnic market research firm, well, the fascination is obvious: we're in this line of work. But let's face it -- the political machinations behind this campaign were just way too darn interesting to pass up (and they bear more than a passing resemblance to the way the Bush administration spins bad press and flings mud against opponents).

After Senate hearings on Local People Meters back in July, it seemed like the issue died down a bit -- or, at least it did from the media perch where I sit.

Until today.

Last we left off, Fox News Corp. and Univision modified their initial goal of simply preventing the LPM rollout -- opting, rather, to launch a full-on frontal assault against Nielsen Media Research's position as a monopoly and calling for the feds to regulate the ratings beast. This culminated in the July 15 testimonies to the Senate communications committee, which resulted in... well we're still trying to figure that out.

One thing is becoming clear though: Nielsen is now winning the PR war. Here's the latest:

* Jesse Jackson now officially endorses Nielsen's Local People Meters. While the Reverend had previously expressed skepticism toward the anti-Nielsen faction (which includes his buddy Al Sharpton), his support to Nielsen has been made formal. Under Rainbow/Push Coalition stationary, he writes (excerpt):

We all want to be counted, but the count must be as fair and accurate and inclusive, and as scientifically sound as possible.

We make the analogy to a boxing match, when the “winner” is announced who has been beaten and battered for 10 rounds – that’s because the judges kept their own personal, and highly unscientific, score cards or “private diaries” of the match. Now, there is “punch count” technology – much like the People Meter - that accurately and scientifically counts the number of punches landed. So the results are clear and accurate.

* Nielsen today also announces a research partnership with the William C. Velasquez Institute. Like the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, which was commissioned by Nielsen as an objective third-party evaluator of their sampling methodology, the WCV Institute legitimizes Nielsen's research efforts to the Latino market -- something that was absent prior.

* So now that Nielsen has both bases covered -- the African American and Latino communities -- how will Rupert Murdoch respond? Well, the early response from his faux community coalition Don't Count Us Out is pretty tepid. You can read DCUO's response to the Jesse Jackson endorsement and their response to the Velasquez partnership for yourself. Now that their cover is blown, you gotta wonder if their hearts are in it anymore. On the other hand, you never count out Rupert.

More to come...

Posted by thomas at September 10, 2004 01:06 AM