Technical Problem Delays Nielsen's TV Ratings

Nielsen has been unable to provide overnight TV ratings for four days this week, following a server issue which went undetected and caused a data collection stoppage over the weekend.

Nielsen daily ratings, which measure the audience sizes for hundreds of shows and are used to set advertising rates, are usually delivered to TV executives as early as 7am the day after data has been collected from the previous night's shows.

'Over the past fifteen months we have institutionalized a focus on process improvement and invested substantially in our media infrastructure,' Mitchell Habib, EVP Global Business Services explained to clients in a letter.

During this time, Nielsen has conducted 'failure mode effect analyses' for many of the processes used to produce its TV ratings, but Habib admitted that the firm had not done so for its servers that support its meter data collection process. As a result, the company was not prepared for the firmware bug that hit the server on Saturday.

'In the course of fixing this issue, we uncovered a second defect on Monday which resulted in further performance degradation and delays,' Habib revealed.

While the issue is now resolved, it has caused a backlog and delays in the weekly ratings which has been escalated by Nielsen analyzing and validating the data before releasing it.

The firm's reporting systems require that all ratings are processed in chronological order. Therefore, Sunday TV ratings were released yesterday, and Monday and Tuesday ratings will be released today. The firm is hoping to catch up by the end of the week, and says it will continue to work around the clock to get back on schedule.

'We realize the inconvenience this causes our clients, especially during this time of year, but our first priority is to make sure the ratings are accurate. In fact, part of the delay is due to our quality checks,' the firm added in a statement.

Web site: www.nielsen.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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