TV & VIDEO - April 24, 1989

A.C. Nielsen Co. is inches from beating out Arbitron Ratings Co. for a more than $30-million, multiyear contract to upgrade TV ratings measurement of Latino households for the all-Spanish Univision and Telemundo networks. “It will probably be Nielsen, but no contract has been signed,” said Doug Darfield, vice president of research for Univision. “You can agree in principle, but once you start poring over contract documents, many things can happen. It’s in the hands of the lawyers.” When and if negotiations are finalized, he said, Nielsen will install People Meters in about 1,000 Latino households in Los Angeles and other cities nationwide. The new service won’t be fully operational until 1991.