NEW YORK — Nielsen’s National Television Audience Measurement (TAM) service has just gotten a big vote of confidence from the non-profit industry association that for 60 year has worked to ensure measurement services are valid, reliable and effective.
The Media Rating Council (MRC)‘s Board of Directors, at the recommendation of the MRC TV Committee, have reinstated the accreditation of the TAM service.
Accreditation of the service was suspended by MRC in September 2021.
Why? “A series of standards non-compliance issues, some of which directly resulted from process and panel degradation issues and operational pressures arising from the COVID-19 pandemic,” impacted the Nielsen service.
Those issues are now gone, as today’s action by the MRC Board re-establishes the National TAM service as an MRC-accredited service.
Importantly, the reinstatement excludes the Digital in TV Ratings (dTVR) component of the TAM service. And, it also excludes Nielsen’s Local Market Television Service, which remains in an accreditation suspension status; Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings (DAR); the forthcoming integration of certain Return Path and ACR Data into the TAM service; and the Nielsen One measurement service. These excluded areas “are in various stages of MRC audit and review, are not accredited,” the MRC emphasized.
MRC Executive Director/CEO George W. Ivie commented, “Nielsen has undertaken strong efforts to correct the issues that led to its loss of MRC accreditation 19 months ago and to restore key aspects of its panel performance. The MRC’s audit has shown these efforts have been successful, and as a result, our TV Committee and Board agreed that accreditation should be reinstated. That said, there is still more work to be done both in the near and long term to ensure Nielsen’s National TAM measurements continue to meet our standards and the requirements of the industry. Specifically, this includes ensuring that the future incorporation of Return Path and ACR Data demonstrates required compliance and transparency to maintain accreditation, continuance of Nielsen’s commitments to validate and improve its estimates of the level of Broadband-Only Households in the TAM service and enhancing the disclosures it provides to users about the variability associated with its estimates of television viewing. These latter two commitments were especially critical to our decision to re-apply accreditation at this time.”
Below is a list of the specific Nielsen National TAM reports to which accreditation now applies (excluding any dTVR estimates these may include):
- NTI Pocketpiece and related standard Media Information Tape
- NTI National Audience Demographics and related standard Media Information Tape
- NTIH National Television Audience Media Information Tape
- NHI standard Cable Media Information Tape
- NSS Pocketpiece and related standard Media Information Tape
- NSS National Audience Demographics and related standard Media Information Tape
- NTI, NHI and NSS Average Commercial Minute Media Information Tapes
- NPower (National Services electronic delivery system); not included in the scope are NPower reports that can be generated from or within the following: (1) Cross-Platform Reporting of TV/Internet (including both the Data Fusion and Single Source products), (2) individual LPM market reporting, (3) Nielsen Claritas PRIZM data, (4) Simmons Behavior Graphics data, (5) MarketBreaks Trend Analysis report, and (6) On-Demand Commercial Ratings (ODCR) reporting
