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Back to Articles page at TNG Research Whose Fault is it?by Dave Zornow It seems there is plenty of "fault" to go around regarding Nielsen's Local People Meters. First, Don't Count Us Out faulted Nielsen for having higher-than-desirable fault rates for minority households in the local people meter sample. But Nielsen says DCUO was at fault because it over-emphasized the importance of fault rates in its publicity, causing previously happy people meter households to find fault with Nielsen's practices. If you are confused, you aren't alone. Here's a brief look at what's a "fault." Almost everyone agrees that local people meters, providing 365 days of demos in seven major markets, are better than the meter-diary measurement they replaced. However, whether they are "good enough" is where people disagree. Nielsen says a household will "fault" when it doesn't deliver quality data on a daily basis. This can happen through equipment failure, when a new DVR / X Box / etc. is connected or if the household members don't regularly push their buttons. Historically, this is most likely to happen in homes with a lot of people watching lots of TV. And a lot of African-American and Hispanic households have these characteristics. Nielsen says that if it doesn't have enough households from one of these groups, it will give more weight to the households it does have "intab" to properly reflect the viewing of the subsample. It also notes fault rates for local people meter DMAs are generally lower than the household meters they replaced, and on par with the national people meter panel. Still, in Washington DC, "fault rates are [still] out of control," said WJLA Research director Patrick Castro, citing wide variations for minority households during July. But major station groups and rep firms disagree. "Fault rates in subsamples are not a big concern," said Pat Ligouri, VP/ABC owned stations Research, who believes weighting is the appropriate remedy. Petry's Research VP Alan Picozzi said the old meter-diary methodology often overstated TV station viewing and "many broadcasters made the assumption that those numbers were real." Now the realities of improved measurement are tampering with the realities of selling all of those reality shows. Now, whose fault is that?. ## |