According to The Hollywood Reporter (whose parent company, VNU, just happens to also own Nielsen), NBC research chief Alan Wurtzel charged that by changing its statistical sample, the ratings provider has created invalid year-to-year comparisons. Wurztel suggests that it is this inaccuracy that has created the impression of a large drop in young adult viewers, rather than an actual dip in viewership.
This season, Nielsen has added more Hispanic males aged 18-34 to the sample of 5,100 TV homes in order to make Nielsen homes more representative of the U.S. population at large. NBC says, though, that those young Hispanic viewers are the ones who aren't watching as much television and that young viewers in other demographics are still glued to the tube.
"The data doesn't seem to indicate that this [change] accounts for a huge percent of the falloff," Jack Loftus, a spokesman for Nielsen, tells the HR. Loftus notes that while there has been a decline in viewership among young Hispanic males, the data shows a general drop as well.
The networks have long expressed some level of discomfort with Nielsen's statistical methodology and its stranglehold on ratings information, but as all of the major networks not named "CBS" experience these dramatically lower numbers, it seems likely that this season's anti-Nielsen complaints will be louder than ever.
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