The Tacky Clintonista-CBC-Fox News Backstory

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/3/30/174338/386

.....

Nielsen is the company that counts how many people watch a TV show so that ad buyers can plan their buys. A few years ago, they proposed a change to their ratings system, which was based on paper surveys of sample audiences. They wanted to automate counting with 'people meters' that could more accurately count viewership and demographics. This is a big deal, because Nielsen is the referee for ratings, and tens of billion of dollars in ad buys are contoured around their ratings system. When the service was first rolled out, initial tests suggested that certain Fox programs had lower minority audiences than was counted under the old paper system. If News Corp let this change happen, Fox was going to take a hit.

.....

At first, according to the New York Times, News Corp just tried threatening Nielsen.


What happened at the meeting is in dispute. Ms. Whiting met with Peter Chernin, president of the News Corporation, and Lachlan Murdoch, who is the son of Rupert Murdoch and chief executive of the Fox stations group. Ms. Whiting said she was told that ''if you go ahead, we will do everything possible to discredit you and the company in Washington and legally, and we will start a competitor.''

''I have never been threatened like that before,'' she said. ''So we knew it was serious.''


The integrity of ratings system is important for the health of the advertising market, so of course News Corp threatened to undermine it by creating their own ratings service which would apparently have ratings more favorable to Fox. So apparently one of News Corp's specialties is polluting neutral and credible information systems with their own bad version based on bullshit that makes them more money. They also use their unethical political tactics against business partners, which is rare in the business world. I imagine if this happened in the news business they might have had a press release ready to go about Nielsen's 'fringe left-wing' bias.

Anyway, after these threats failed, News Corp began applying political pressure. First, it hired well-connected Clintonistas.


That meeting led to the involvement of the Clinton camp. The News Corporation turned to the Glover Park Group, a media consulting firm whose partners include Joe Lockhart, who was a press secretary under President Bill Clinton; Michael Feldman, who was a senior adviser to Vice President Al Gore; and Howard Wolfson, who was Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief spokesman during her United States Senate campaign in 2000. The introduction was made by Gary Ginsberg, a former adviser to President Clinton who is now the News Corporation's executive vice president, according to people involved in the discussions.

[izzybeans]

1. I've always been a skeptic of Fox's ratings. The paper survey would provide Nielsen

with styles of viewership. Fox doesn't want its advertisers to know the majority of its audience is pointing and laughing amd turning the station back to somethine else during the break. Actually no channel wants advertisers to know how much revenue they waste on t.v. ads.

If the sampling procedures were correct then they would be much more accurate than the current system.

[Bucky]

4. Actually their fear is that they have "passive viewing" patterns

That is, that some of the people who are watching Fox are turning it on to have noise on in the house and not really paying attention to the news. I mean, what else are they gonna do, read a book?

It may be a large enough share of their audience that it could affect their bottom line ratings. After all, the point of advertising is to promote awareness of either products or brand names. A passive viewer may not recall either and that fact alone could shave big dollar amounts off of Fox revenues (or at least give advertisers a big bargaining chip).

Now, don't get too excited about this news. Fox still has excellent ratings and its news is still being actively watched by many of its viewers. They're simply not wanting to risk rocking the boat when they themselves are at the top of the ratings. It may well be that the new system could benefit Fox, tho my understanding of their viewership pattenrns suggests otherwise. They're just being risk averse here---and of course they're also being complete bastards to the Nielsen group.

[illinoisprogressive]

2. Matt did a fantastic job with this article. Without blogs....

[C_U_L8R]

3. Unless you're CMO of Porky's Pork Rinds

any marketer who buys ad space on Faux is throwing their money way.
Not only are their numbers totally suspect but their audience is a
bunch of dopes and their content is vile bullshit. You don't want that
garbage splattering all over your nice shiny new brand, do you?