Nielsen to networks: Just some bugs in the system

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There’s never a good time for Nielsen to have a glitch with the ratings, but you really couldn’t pick a worse time than May sweeps. Not only are the networks trying to generate lots of advertising revenue before the end of the season, they also are scrutinizing the numbers to figure out what shows to bring back in the fall.

But a software glitch this week meant no ratings since Saturday, leaving research geeks and network suits fuming and Nielsen begging forgiveness. Nielsen initially said it had a server issue that caused the data it collects from the roughly 12,000 homes (that’s right, just 12,000 homes are measured to determine what we watch; scary huh?) to be held up for several hours.

Several hours turned into several days because of the logjam that the server freeze created. It was only this afternoon that Nielsen finally started sending out ratings from the weekend and the company doesn’t think it will be fully caught up until the end of the week.

In a letter to its clients, Nielsen Executive Vice President Mitchell Habib said a ‘firmware bug from the server manufacturer went undetected’ and in the repair process another defect was found.

This is Nielsen’s second big goof in as many weeks. Last Wednesday, the company quietly started telling its clients that a lot of the people it has in its ratings survey don’t actually know how to use the ‘people meters’ on top of their television sets. Nielsen estimated that it has been understating national ratings by 10%.

So just maybe the networks have a case when they complain that the numbers are a bit fuzzy at times.

— Joe Flint