LA Radio: KSCA Fires Employee Over Ratings Flap

Joes Valle

Univision has terminated an employee at Ragional Mexican KSCA 101.9 FM related to 'inconsistences' which have delayed Nielsen's release of May PPMs for the market.

Univision Jose Valle issed a statement Monday:

"Univision is fully committed to quality data.  Nielsen recently reached out to inform us that a media affiliated household had been identified in Los Angeles, and that it was connected to a Univision radio employee from the KSCA station.  This household was separate from and unrelated to the prior problem that Nielsen  had identified in connection with the Los Angeles ratings.  We commenced an investigation and took immediate action by terminating the employee based on our findings.  We are cooperating fully with Nielsen and the MRC to ensure the industry has quality data.

A radio station employee being related to a Nielsen participant seriously undermines the industry and is unacceptable.  We will continue to cooperate fully and ensure the efficacy of our internal training and compliance programs, which will be ongoing across all Univision stations.”

Nielsen also released a statement:

Subsequent to last week’s announcement about the delay in Los Angeles PPM Radio data, Nilesen has learned that a media affiliated household participated in the Los angeles sample during the May 2014 and APril 2014 report periods.  We have removed this media affiliated household from the panel in addition to removing the household that did not meet our quality control standards last week. Both households had been installed for an extended period.

Nilesen will conduct an impact analysis extending back over the last year and will provide the market with this analysis. The behavior of a media affiliated household not self-reporting is a serious violation of data integrity standards.

Nilesen is committed to upholding the highest standards of data integrity and acts swiftly to meet those standards. We will be taking a number of actions to minimize the risk of reoccurrence and ensure users of Los Angeles ratings data are adequately and prominently notified.  Additionally, Nilesen will be implementing an immediate and aggressive review of our policies and procedures to protect integrity of our panels. We will be transparent with the industry and share our plans as quickly as possible."

Nielsen also stated it will maintain the delivery schedule announced last week.

• LA PPM data for the May 2014 report month and May Week Four (Weeklies data) will released on Tuesday June 17th at 9a PT
• June 2014 Week One data will also be released along with the May 2014 data.  Revised Los Angeles data for the APRIL 2014 report period will be released at 9a PT  Thursday JUNE 19th.

The company added all LA data releasing this week will reflect an in-tab sample that excludes both the media-affiliated household mentioned in this statement and the household mentioned in our June 9th announcement which is being removed from the panel because it failed to meet quality compliance standards unrelated to media-affiliation.