After nearly half a century, American television is going through a major overhaul on how viewership is measured, and the nation’s TV rating service, Nielsen Media Research, says Asian Americans will not be left out.
Critics claim that Nielsen undercounts people of color, but Nielsen is trying to combat those deficiencies by breathing new life to the term “interactive television” with “local people-meters” installed on household TV sets.
The size of a VHS cassette, the people-meter is electronically connected to all the TVs in a selected home. It automatically records what is being watched and when. Pre-set buttons indicate which family member is watching the program.
“The people-meter system means everyone counts,” said Susan Whiting, president of Nielsen Media Research. “This is proven technology that allows us to measure viewership by all groups of people more accurately.”
Local people-meters have already been installed in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, but not without reproach. This past July, Fox TV, Univision and several civil rights groups criticized Nielsen for possible undercounting. Critics said not enough minority households are being sampled, which could lead to shows popular among minority groups getting the axe.
Despite the controversy, Nielsen will bring the people-meters to Bay Area households Oct. 1, a move they still insist offers more accurate and timely local ratings. The Bay Area sample will be comprised of 800 households, 17 percent of them APA. The number of Asian American homes participating has been increased by 50 percent.
Bruce Hoynoski, a statistician and senior vice president for Nielsen, said this new tracking system is skewed toward APAs and will properly represent the viewing habits of Asian Americans.
But members of the Northern California Chinese Media expressed concern over what is considered Chinese-language programming. Not all Mandarin viewers will watch Cantonese programming and vice versa.
“Right now, I think Nielsen is targeting Asians as a whole, but I don’t think they’ve figured out a way to specifically track the viewing habits of Cantonese and Mandarin households,” said Jenny Yen from Eastern Television.
Nielsen says they will send field representatives — fluent in Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Tagalog and Vietnamese — to recruit APA households. Hoynoski said the representatives will go through cultural sensitivity training and a series of etiquette workshops to learn about the various APA ethnic backgrounds and customs.
“Our goal is to know and identify APA families in advance before we knock on their doors,” Hoynoski said. “I think educating ourselves of the different APA ethnicities will help us get our foot in the door to recruit families into our Nielsen households.”
David Lee, of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, said there is a large gap among APAs and the media.
“The main thing here is to close the gap,” Lee said. “The major work we do is voter registration and more than 70 percent of APA voters get their news from Chinese media, so media is an important marketplace and recognition is important.”
Until now, Nielsen has tracked viewing habits by paper diaries and TV set meters. The paper diary was introduced to households in the 1950s and asked family members to complete a seven-day television log in 15-minute increments. In 1978, Nielsen converted the Bay Area to a meter market, and 500 households were selected to be monitored. The meters told which programs were being watched but nothing about the audience.