TNS, the London-based audience measurement firm that, along with TiVo, has provided the only real competition for giant Nielsen, just rejected a $1.87 billion buyout offer from WPP Group, owner of, among other things, the media and advertising agencies MindShare, Mediaedge:cia, MediaCom, Maxus, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, and Y&R. TNS's decision to refuse the buyout, because they viewed it as a lowball offer, quickly prompted rumors that Nielsen was preparing its own offer, which would take yet another competitive player off the market. Sound familiar?

Nielsen says American ad spending was up a mere 0.6 percent in 2007. Meanwhile, competitor TNS says it jumped by only 0.2 percent. And Jack Myers, of JackMyers Media Business Report and ever the pragmatist, says the sky is not falling, neither company is accurate, and that media spends were up 1.9 percent and even as much as 3.1 percent.

Know what we've always considered the dumbest concept when it comes to TV audience monitoring? That nobody has figured out how to use that big clunky box attached to hundreds of millions of television sets and get it to spit out viewership data. It's like, "Hi, I'm a cable box, and I know exactly when the fat ass sitting on the Jennifer Convertibles softa in front of me changes the channel, and I bet somebody might find that data useful."

Instead, we rely on Nielsen's sampling techniques, which narrow things down to, say, give or take a hundred thousand viewers. Oh, and then there's the little problem of Nielsen's totally flawed methodology, which, among other atrocities, includes ignoring the whole swath of young people getting their bachelor's degrees.

So imagine our glee when we heard TNS Media Research is taking on Nielsen with actual data from set-top boxes. What's this? Accuracy?

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