FCC’s Simington Seeks Inquiry Into Reliance on Nielsen Data

The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously Thursday to tentatively adopt Nielsen's Local TV Report as the successor to the company's phased-out TV Station Index. According to NextTv.com, the FCC uses the Nielsen info to determine TV station markets for must-carry/retransmission consent carriage elections and other purposes.

But one commissioner, Republican Nathan Simington, used that vote to suggest the FCC's reliance on Nielsen data for that and many other purposes could be an overreliance on a single source that needed examining and perhaps rethinking.

“The commission looks to Nielsen to determine whether a broadcast station is ‘significantly viewed’ outside of its market,” Simington said in a lengthy statement at the FCC's July public meeting. “Nielsen’s market-level TV household estimates determine whether a station is within the ‘Top Four’ in the market, impacting ownership possibilities for broadcasters. And whether a station is failing for the purposes of ownership rules — again, Nielsen.”

He said it was a “big deal” to have a company “formally blessed” by the FCC by name as the basis of those regulatory determinations.

Simington said the reliance on Nielsen is understandable given that it is essentially the only game in town. That may not be a bad thing, he said, but it was worth looking at potential “bottlenecks, choke points and single points of failure.”

Elaborating on the point, he pointed out that the Media Ratings Council (MRC), which accredits media ratings agencies, had suspended Nielsen’s accreditation last year for "deep-rooted" performance issues, an accreditation Nielsen has yet to regain.

While Simington said he was confident Nielsen would work “diligently” to correct its defects, he said the suspension should “give the FCC pause” about being functionally obligated to adopt “recently unaccredited Nielsen data and definitions.”