I flew down to Birmingham on Thursday and had great, but really brief, meetings will all the sales reps who handle my clients. I also was able to listen to a fascinating presentation by ODI's contact @ Nielsen Media.
Seems Nielsen is moving into the 21st Century this winter, no longer recording electronic versions of your data on individual DVDs and then FedExing them to Birmingham but instead will provide ODI (and the companies who do similar things with their data) with an online download as soon as the data is available. Why do you care? Most of my clients will get data at least one day sooner. And for several stations that currently have to wait until Saturday for data will now get information on Friday. (For many years, seven of my Sunbelt clients got their November Sweeps data on Christmas Eve. Guess what I would do all Christmas Day?)
Also, next year there will be Program Titles available for use in CABLE, so if your client thinks they are buying a specific program but they are actually getting a tight time period daypart rotation, you'll be able to show the ratings for both the actual show and the broader daypart. Great competitive stuff.
Nielsen is also going to be making changes to reporting thresholds, much like their "fatal flaw" in the old STAR software. You might pull a report and instead of getting numbers, you'll get a text comment about not enough intab for that demo and daypart. Smaller markets are going to be pounded by this, so it's going to mean more work for me, or people at stations who do what I do.
I had to return a day early... Karen came down with something on Thursday and I came back to care for her. As I told the guys in Birmingham, I only have two interests: taking care of Karen, and taking care of you, my clients.
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