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Nielsen Surprise: Network Ratings May Be Higher Than They Appear

The season debut of
The season debut of "Heroes" (with Masi Oka and David Anders) will be rerun Saturday, which will result in a higher Nielsen rating. (By Paul Drinkwater -- Nbc)
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Nielsen thinks so, too. "It really is part of the ongoing change in the way people watch television and our need to be able to capture and report all of that," Nielsen Vice President Anne Elliot told The TV Column.

Wurtzel wondered why the other networks were crying foul when they've known about Nielsen New Processing Option 2.0 for weeks. Execs at the other networks say it's because they did not know NBC planned to take advantage of NNPO 2.0 until the very last second -- and in Premiere Week, no less.

Also, Nielsen did not notify The Reporters Who Cover Television of this change until Tuesday morning as they were waiting eagerly to see how various shows, including "Heroes," fared on the first night of the TV season.

"The first program to take advantage of this new processing option is 'Heroes' on NBC-TV which aired on Monday September 24, 2007," Nielsen said in its news release announcing the new option, sent to the media on Tuesday September 25, 2007.

How "Heroes" did compared with its first-season unveiling last September, according to early stats, was flat among all viewers (14.1 million, for second place in the hour behind ABC's "Dancing With the Stars") and up 10 percent in the 18-49 demographic that NBC targets, trouncing all time-slot competitors.

Sadly, that got lost in the media's rush to make what-the-heck? calls to Nielsen, to NBC and to the other broadcast networks to find out about this "new processing option."

Meanwhile, over at the other networks, kerfuffle erupted. A regularly scheduled conference call between ABC execs and Nielsen suits turned into a shoutfest. Fox fired off a strongly worded letter to Nielsen yesterday, saying what-the-heck? and reminding it that when Nielsen sent word of this new processing option it said "it is important to note that broadcast networks do not usually repeat program episodes with the same commercials within the same weekly measurement interval."

There's always next season.


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