Nielsen Media Research is changing the way local television ratings are calculated in Chicago on Thursday, a controversial switch from paper diaries to an electronic TV monitor that some critics say undercounts minority viewers.
A group called Don’t Count Us Out protested the new ratings method as unfair Wednesday. A handful of volunteers around the Loop wore TV monitors on their heads and handed out fliers urging people to contact Nielsen and ask them to stop using the new system.
The new method, called Local People Meters, uses a remote control and a box attached to the TV to track what is being watched in a household and who is watching it. It is already being used in Los Angeles and New York.
Nielsen says the Local People Meters are more accurate because they catch all the channels someone may watch during one sitting. The company says families who fill in the diaries don’t always record every channel they may have flipped through and watched for a few minutes.
“The beauty of this system is you don’t have to write down everything,” said Cheryl Pearson-McNeil, vice president of communications and community affairs for Nielsen in Chicago.
But the Don’t Count Us Out campaign, which is made up of minority advocacy groups and is funded by News Corp., the Fox network’s corporate parent, says the system doesn’t accurately reflect what programs Latinos and African-Americans are watching.
The group contends there are two key problems with the Local People Meters: That the system does not accurately classify different racial groups and that some users have trouble working the system, so bad data is collected.
The group argues an undercounting of minority viewers could mean some programs that show a dip in ratings could go off the air or lose advertising money.
“It has an economic impact, locally and globally,” said Chicago Ald. Manny Flores (1st). Flores and several other aldermen have pushed for a hearing Aug. 31 to review the impact that Local People Meters will have in the Chicago market and make sure the rating system is fair and accurate.
Ald. Ed Smith (28th) said he was concerned about the rating system because an undercounting of African-American viewers could disenfranchise the community.
“When we don’t get counted, our media people … our people in the industry are not going to get hired,” Smith said.
Nielsen denies it undercounts minority viewers. The company uses U.S. Census data to make sure it samples households that represent the racial makeup of the community, Pearson-McNeil said. There are 800 homes sampled in the 16-county Chicago market, with each home representing 33,000 households.
“We do everything as fairly as possible,” Pearson-McNeil said. “We count everyone.”
Critics dispute that assertion by pointing to a report in the Los Angeles Times about a confidential audit that found problems with race and origin classifications in New York’s Local People Meters.
Ann Elliot, vice president of communications for Nielsen Media Research, said the New York report showed some racial identification can be subjective, and Nielsen is working to more clearly identify who is Latino or African-American. Also, company representatives are working to train and retrain households who are having problems using the devices.
In Chicago, Nielsen says the people meters and the diaries will be used to record ratings until Sept. 27.
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Edited by Patrick Olsen (polsen@tribune.com) and Drew Sottardi (dsottardi@tribune.com)
