Since October 2007, Nielsen has been inflating the ad spends at about 20 local TV stations. That's because they've been understating household coverage estimates, and overstating the coverage area of those stations, illegitimately awarding them more viewers than they actually had.
The error-plagued ratings company won't say which networks were affected – we wouldn't want angry advertisers to know exactly who to call – but they're blaming it on "the methods it has used to calculate their coverage on satellite TV operators DirecTV and EchoStar, and that the problem was limited to the 26% of U.S. TV households that receive TV via the DBS provide."
Smaller cable networks rely on this data to sell advertising, which means millions of dollars in ad budgets may have been spent in the wrong place.
Nielsen has given itself 60 days to figure out the exact cause of the problem and restate its numbers. But we all know how well they do with promised timelines.
Editorial Director
Nielson rating stinks. They have lost their edge, and reliability, not to mention the trust of the public. Firing Nielson now would save a lot of great shows, and they should be reprimanded for shows that they have personally been responsible for giving bad ratings to. Firefly and Jericho are only two to mention of the hundreds over the years.