NEWS AND VIEWS : Nielsen Will Study How ‘Broadcast News’ Plays at Home

The television networks have long used A.C. Nielsen’s ratings and research to tell them what you like to watch. Now a video company is doing the same.

CBS/Fox Home Video will have Nielsen apply its new “people meter” system to measure viewer response to “Broadcast News” after the company releases the video of the film on Sept. 1. Starring William Hurt, Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks, the James L. Brooks film was a box-office hit late last year and is expected to be big at video stores, too.

Just as “Nielsen families” determine what Americans see on broadcast TV, they’ll start having an effect on the shape of video to come. Especially in terms of what else winds up on the feature films we rent--other than the film itself.

Among the things CBS/Fox expects to find out about the tape, according to marketing director Bruce Pfander:

--How many times each Nielsen household watches “Broadcast News,” which deals with an anchor (Hurt), who is hired merely for his attractive image, and the people he works with.

--Which people in each Nielsen-equipped house watch the tape.

--Whether viewers fast-forward (“zap”) past certain elements on the tape, including everything from the anti-copying warning (now who would want to miss that?) to a trailer (for an unspecified coming CBS/Fox release).

Though there’s no commercial on the “Broadcast News” video release, commercials still go to the heart of the Nielsen measurements. The “Broadcast News” experiment will provide CBS/Fox with information that will help the company decide “where a message should go if we put one on a tape.”

So far, CBS/Fox, unlike Paramount and some other major video companies, isn’t trying out ads on its tapes. “This company has been very cautious in approaching that,” Pfander said. “For one thing, the revenue (from a commercial) is simply not significant enough to violate the integrity of the film.”

All that, of course, is subject to change. Especially if the people meters show that people don’t tend to zap very much. And Pfander didn’t rule out ads in the future, particularly “synergistic” cross-promotions such as those that other video companies have worked out with Pepsi.

Nielsen replaced its old viewing-measurement system with people meters last September, and the new electronic setup offers much more detailed information on who watches what when. Pfander says that Nielsen expanded the sophistication of the people meter just in time to coincide with the video release of “Broadcast News”--the first tape to be researched in this way by Nielsen.

The “Broadcast News” tapes will be specially encoded to alert Nielsen equipment that it is being played on a VCR. The TV-ratings company will provide information on the tape to CBS/Fox over a 12-month period.

Pfander said it was “virtually certain” that CBS/Fox will follow up the “Broadcast News” effort with similar encoding and people-metering on “Big”--a current box-office hit--and “Masquerade,” though video-release dates for those films have not yet been determined.

CBS/Fox, according to Pfander, will probably disclose all or most of what it finds out from Nielsen. When it broadcasts the news, what’s learned may dynamically affect how videos will look in the 1990s. Previous (though less scientific) research has indicated that there’s little public resistance to extraneous material on feature-film tapes, such as Pepsi’s “Top Gun” ad.

Will the Nielsen findings on this and other tapes (including those with commercials) indicate that renters won’t mind putting up with two or three ads per tape? Or are most VCR owners hoping that the people being measured by people meters know how to use their fast-forward buttons?

INVASIVE VCRS: According to a new Gallup Poll, VCRs may be even more pervasive in American life than the electronics companies have been saying.

In June, the Electronics Industries Assn. estimated that 56% of U.S. homes with TVs also have VCRs--up 6% from a year before. However, the Gallup Organization, in a poll commissioned by the association, indicated last week that the figure is closer to a whopping 65%.

The Gallup Poll also found compact disc players to be in more homes than estimated by other research--14% rather than the 7%-10% figures usually cited. Eight percent of homes, the organization stated, have video cameras.

Gallup also found out that those VCRs get a lot of use, too: On the average, 11 hours a week.