Measuring Up

>>Since the 1950s, Nielsen ratings have been the gold standard for measuring television audiences. The formula used to be simple: More viewers watching a TV show equals more valuable commercial time equals more ad revenue for networks and local stations.

Now Nielsen Media Research, which dominates the television industry and its estimated $60 billion in advertising, faces new technology and new viewing habits. Measuring audiences in an age of digital distribution-via the Internet, digital video recorders (DVRs) or other means-is changing the way Nielsen does business, according to company spokesman Gary Holmes.

"In the old days, you used to just measure the family in the house watching television live. Now, people watch TV in different places, [and] they watch it at different times from when it is broadcast," Holmes says.

In the Naples-Fort Myers market, TV ratings are measured in two ways. The older method is with diaries: booklets in which members of Nielsen households tally the times, channels and programs they watch. More recently, some information comes from meters attached to TV sets in Nielsen households that record what is viewed.

The metering method costs each participating local commercial TV

station approximately $30,000 a month, according to Bob Beville, director of sales for Waterman Broadcasting, operator of NBC2 and ABC7.

Advertisers aren't convinced of the data's reliability, however. With DVR services, such as TiVo, viewers record shows to watch later, and they fast-forward through commercials.

"We're up to about 12 or 13 percent of the population having DVRs and that's growing," Holmes says. "Among DVR households, up to one-half of all of the programs [viewed] are watched via DVR."