Already bogged down with its current responsibilities of finding out how many people are watching a particular TV show, Nielsen chief David Calhoun wants to take on a new gig: Tracking how many people are watching a particular TV show on their computers.
If you’ve been flying stand-by, let us fill you in: Nielsen fancies itself as the arbiter of all-things media consumption, and they want to put a statistical figure on all the ways you might catch Saturday Night Live. (From the screen in the back of a cab? We’re sure they’re working on it.)
By the end of 2008, Nielsen wants to have “introduced,” but not necessarily executed, the new measurement. Reports AdAge: “Nielsen expects to begin installing technology with its TV panelists in the third or fourth quarter of 2008, said [Jim O’Hara, president of media product leadership for Nielsen]. The company has other ways to measure video consumption online, including a service known as VideoCensus. The company expects its panel to grow to about 20,000 homes encompassing approximately 60,000 people by the end of 2009, compared to about 14,000 homes at present encompassing approximately 32,000 people.”
Finally, we’ll be able to tell if more men are women are watching 2 Girls, 1 Cup.
Editorial Director
Last year, when Nielsen came under fire by the fans of several cancelled television shows, I had some faith they could fix it.
Nowadays, it seems more that they are playing whack-the-mole. There is no clear focus. They have to fix the rating system that drive entertainment decisions before they can hope to provide better analytics for something a simple Google program or StatCounter can do.
Best,
Rich