http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/02/nielsen_clients_decry_delays_i.php

Nielsen Clients Decry Delays in ‘Fast’ Nationals
By Michele Greppi

The broadcast networks are steamed at Nielsen Media Research because the fast national ratings, for which they pay a premium, have increasingly become the not-so-fast nationals.

The prime-time data officially known as fast affiliate ratings has been late 27% of the time since the start of the 2007-08 season and 37% of the time—at least 13 days—since the first of the year, according to calculations by one network.

That percentage is almost as bad as the airlines’ late-arrival rate, one network research executive told TelevisionWeek.

Sometimes, the fast nationals arrive just an hour or so before the final nationals. The fast nationals for Monday, Feb. 4, were delivered to the network clients Wednesday morning—nearly a full day after their contractual Tuesday morning delivery and little more than an hour before the arrival of final nationals for Monday night, which were due Tuesday afternoon.

Nielsen routinely explains to clients that “processing delays” will make the fast nationals late.

Clients who participated in a conference call Feb. 1 run by Nielsen’s Catherine Herkovic, senior VP and managing director of national television client services, said the delays were attributable to three root causes:

- More challenges than expected collecting data from the Active/Passive Meters, which were developed over the course of more than a decade to measure digital viewing. The installation of A/P Meters began rolling out in 2005.

- Inadequate hardware and software for the increased volume and complexity of data being collected this TV season, including digital recorder playback data. Fast nationals include live viewing plus same-day playback data. Nielsen also began offering data on playback up to seven days after recording and commercial ratings. Nielsen said it is adding more servers, which it indicated could address about 25% of the problem within perhaps a couple of weeks.

- Higher than historical levels of human error, which was not defined.

The last reason touched particularly raw nerves with the clients, who have no other source from which to obtain the ratings and demographic data on which they base commercial rates because Nielsen has no competitors. The research company’s monopoly status has long been a source of friction between it and clients.

Nielsen told the conference call participants that it would take steps to try to reduce the “points of human intervention” in the process, one research executive said.

Clients wonder if the delays also could be due to too few personnel—or too many less-trained personnel—handling increasingly complicated core tasks as Nielsen rolls out ever-more-sophisticated products and services—such as its national TV/Internet Fusion database that would allow clients to focus on the relationship between consumers’ usage of both platforms.

Clients also wonder if the problems with the fast nationals delivery hint at other hidden problems in the final nationals or other data.

Such issues are sure to come up in conversations during Nielsen’s national client meeting on audience measurement Thursday and Friday at Caesars Palace Las Vegas.

Nielsen spokesman Jack Loftus downplayed the human error question, characterizing its frequency as “not a lot” and saying it was “way down the list” of bugs in the system. He said error often takes place in the homes in the sample.

The root causes all contribute to stress on the company’s systems, he said, but, “We’re trying to get the data out as best we can and as fast as we can.”

Mr. Loftus, who is retiring from Nielsen at the end of February, added: “You can’t go backwards. You just have to keep getting this out and getting it right; and that’s what we will endeavor to do.”

However, not only are the clients helpless against the delays, they’re affected by the ripple effects, which include meetings that must be rescheduled because of missing data or meetings held with incomplete data.

Moreover, the delays seem to be increasing at a time when the networks’ development processes for next season normally would be in high gear but instead are idled by the Writers Guild of America strike that started Nov. 5.

Because the networks are on the cusp of canceling or dramatically retooling sales presentations and meetings and events that had been scheduled in conjunction with the annual May upfront ritual, the next three months are even more important than usual to networks and advertisers.