TV-Viewing Meters Are Opposed in L.A.

Some community activists hope a Nielsen Media Research plan to start measuring individual TV-viewing tastes in Los Angeles via electronic “people meters” meets the fate of a low-rated show: cancellation.

The protest over the issue, already a hot button in New York, shifts to Los Angeles next week with a “Don’t Count Us Out” rally set for Monday on the steps of City Hall.

The demonstration will be led by a coalition contending that the electronic system -- scheduled for expansion into L.A. in July -- will continue what they say is Nielsen’s poor history of measuring viewing habits of African American and Latino households. The end result, they maintain, is likely to be fewer programs serving those viewers.

“This is very similar to the census count,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks. “People are very sensitive when instruments are used that will dictate their future.”

At the center of the struggle is Nielsen’s plan to replace its traditional ratings diary, in which families write down what they watch, in its largest markets. It would substitute an electronic system that viewers would switch on when they watch TV, more closely tracking what each person sees.

Nielsen already uses the people meters, which give more immediate results than diaries, for local stations in Boston and for all of its overnight ratings of nationally viewed programs.

Nielsen critics contend that under the diary system, African American and Latino viewers are already undercounted because of an unusually high “fault rate,” or failure to measure what they are watching because they are not as diligent as others about recording their viewing habits.

The activists are concerned that people meters, while seemingly more accurate, may likewise undercount if people fail to activate the devices when viewing.

In Los Angeles, Nielsen plans to debut the system July 8. Earlier protests caused the company to push back the introduction in New York from April to June.

Nielsen Senior Vice President Jack Loftus defended the company’s methodology as sound, accusing Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and its Fox network of pulling the strings behind the scenes of the protests. He said News Corp. believed people meters might show lower ratings on Fox and UPN stations, which are cash cows for the company.

Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son and chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group, has said people meters could undercount viewership by 25% in general, affecting young and minority viewers in particular.

Loftus said the younger Murdoch privately went well beyond that, going so far as to threatening to galvanize community support if Nielsen went through with the plan. “They told us that they were behind” the protests, he said, asserting that Lachlan Murdoch told Nielsen executives, “If you go ahead with people meters, we will actually destroy you.”

Opponents denied Nielsen’s allegation that they were doing Fox’s bidding. “Fox did not come to me with this,” said Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte). “The group I am working with is a Latino coalition group.”

A News Corp. spokesman also denied Nielsen’s claim.

Nonetheless, the issue has made for strange bedfellows, uniting the conservative-leaning News Corp. with liberal politicians and activists, some of whom have opposed Rupert Murdoch’s plans to acquire satellite television giant DirecTV.

“Fox has an ax to grind with Nielsen,” said Alex Nogales, secretary of the National Latino Media Council who usually is on the opposite side of issues with News Corp. “There’s no love lost between us. But on this issue, we agree 100%.”

Loftus acknowledged that recruiting Latino households was difficult for Nielsen because many Spanish-language families were unfamiliar with the ratings system and wary of telling an outsider their viewing choices.

But he said ratings information that critics interpret as undercounting of African American and Latino viewers in reality reflected the larger, ongoing fragmentation of TV viewing, as people turn away from broadcasters and toward cable.

In New York, for example, drops in ratings by some African American-themed shows on broadcast networks are apparently explained by a shift toward programs on Viacom Inc.’s Black Entertainment Television cable channel, Loftus said.

Critics said they believed Nielsen should pull the plug on its plans until more questions were answered. “You have a system that is either perceived, or is real, as to its undercounting,” Parks said. “You can’t have a system that has some inaccurate, or perceived inaccurate, information.”