BWAHAHAHAHA. Nielsen's clients continue to rebel against the company's incompetence. Steamrolling ahead with new audience measurement tactics that it's clearly not ready for, Nielsen yesterday announced to customers it would use its "live" national sample of TV audiences to test its online viewership initiative, which hopes to measure how many people are watching TV shows on their computers. It's all apart of their ambitious (and DOA) A2/M2, or "anytime/anywhere," initiative.

Nielsen has only signed up 375 households, within their 14,000 national sample, to participate in both panels; privacy concerns have kept most households from allowing the company to monitor both mediums. And Nielsen's big bucks clients don't like where this is headed.

Reports MediaPost:

But some of researchers believe the magnitude of this live test is unprecedented and that the potential impact on the its national TV ratings sample is so profound that Nielsen ought to rethink the plan, especially given initial tests conducted outside its live sample that indicated a high degree of resistance among households to allow Nielsen to measure both their TV and PC usage.

"No research has been done by Nielsen to determine impact on ratings. It's called a 'live test,'" said one attendee. "The TV ratings currency will become a guinea pig or lab rat" that would be used to determine: the cooperation and fatigue of respondents and the impact on TV ratings.

So not only will Nielsen continue to have trouble delivering its TV ratings data on time, but the already suspect numbers will be even more flawed.