Task Force On Television Measurement Urges Senate & House To Reject TV Ratings Oversight Bills.

The Independent Task Force on Television Measurement today urged the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the House Commerce Committee to decline legislation that would require new oversight of TV ratings. In letters to the Committees, Task Force Chairwoman Cardiss Collins warned that the bills would “significantly roll back much of the progress” that the organization and Nielsen have achieved toward more accurately measuring how audiences of color watch television.

Under the terms of the bills introduced by Senator Conrad Burns (R, MT) and Rep. Vito Fossella (R, NY), a television ratings service would have to be fully accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC) — currently a voluntary industry self-regulatory body — before it could be introduced into a market. Moreover, any existing service that does not have MRC accreditation would have to stop operating.

Concerned that the legislation would seriously limit Nielsen’s ability to introduce new and improved measurement systems, the Task Force noted that such systems benefit ethnic networks, stations and advertising agencies because they better capture the viewing behavior of audiences of color.

“However, under these bills, opportunities like this would disappear,” the Task Force wrote in its letters. “For example, the legislation would stop Nielsen from continuing to provide affordable local ratings to Spanish-language stations. That is because existing services like the Nielsen Hispanic Station Index — whose samples are fairly small and combine data from other samples — cannot be accredited by the Media Rating Council. If the bills become law, Nielsen would have to shut down these services and eliminate the only available ratings to these clients.”

The Task Force urged the members of the Senate and House Commerce Committees to support a continuing free market process for dealing with ratings issues, and to ensure that communities of color are not negatively impacted, as demonstrated by its report and recommendations.