How does the generally competent Sara Erichson, VP of sales and client services, plan to handle the general incompetence of Nielsen, the audience measure company plagued by, among other things, delays in reporting its TV data?

Like any good media conglomerate exec, she's overseeing the snatching up other companies.

Last week in Las Vegas, Nielsen announced the purchase of Audience Analytics, the maker of Audience Watcher software, which will "help [Nielsen] to report and process large quantities of audience measurement data."

For an undisclosed sum, the deal will supposedly allow Nielsen do things like "gather," "integrate," "analyze," and generally "make some sort of sense" of all the data it's collecting from places like panel members and set-top boxes, where video-on-demand data still confuses the company, as well as Internet viewing, which Nielsen promises to give you reports about even though they've just begun thinking about the idea that Americans might watch TV shows on something beside their television.

In the end, they hope to have a single platform that encompasses all avenues of media consumption. It'll make for prettier equations, better press releases, and higher fees. It will not, however, make their data any more accurate.