Indeed they are… this week. NBC6 has been number one throughout the week with ratings between 15 and 26, thanks to the Olympics. On Friday night, NBC6 topped the ratings with a 26.0 rating. Then, at 11, NBC6 earned a 12.4 and beat everyone. The surprising thing is, the NBC6 weekend news did better. While NBC6 news at 11 with Jackie Nespral earned a 12.4 on Friday, and lost half it’s viewers, the weekend crew on Saturday went into the 6PM newscast with a 15.6, and came out with a 13.0. Then at 11, they did even better, starting the newscast off with a 17.0 rating, and coming out with a 15.0. I’m sure the weekend crew is very happy about this. Pat yourself on the back, John, Adam, and Joel. You deserve it.
Finally after all this time the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale market is getting electronic ratings tracking.
Testing of Local People Meters will begin this summer, meters will be installed at 600 homes in Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. Full tracking will begin by October 2008.
Even though LPMs are long overdue they are still somewhat flawed. Right now volunteer households tracked by Nielsen must fill diaries out every 15 minutes on when, what and how long they watched because the electronic devices attached to TVs do not track demographics, only what channel the TV was tuned to and for how long.
LPMs bridge that gap by relying on family members to press a number, assigned to them, on a remote-like device when they start watching TV and again when they leave the room. In addition Nielsen hopes guests will punch in their genger and age when they visit the household.
So if a family member doesn’t press the button they don’t get tracked.
If grandma likes watching WSVN and there are 3 other people there who for whatever reason don’t press their number only grandma gets tracked and Channel 7’s demos go down the toilet and ad revenues with it. So to speak.
Equally if rebellious little Johnny decided to screw with the Nielsen suits he could push any button and make it look like dad watched the Lifetime channel all day long.
LPMs record what’s being watched every 2.7 seconds and merge that data with demographics of each family member who hopefully pushed their number.
The Palm Beach market which ranks 41 38 in size will have Local People Meters in 2012
