The Perspective of the Cable Companies
We've looked at the overall concerns of the major broadcasters and ad agencies, now we'll look at the cable industry and their interests in these matters. Evidently they already weren't too happy as in a meeting at the NBC offices, only a small number of cable executives were asked to come to the meeting, based upon room size. When you hear about this though, it was obviously done on purpose to send a message. Who couldn't have found a larger meeting place if it was really desired? This would have been the ultimate in incompetence if it wasn't done purposely.
This leads us to the major concerns of the cable industry in the negotiations. In connection with what we just said, they don't want to be treated like a distant relative in the decision-making process. The way they want that practically expressed is to no longer have the ratings released in two steps. The first for the broadcasters, while the cable companies wait around for their ratings secondarily. They want it released all at once.
Next, they want Nielsen to be accredited and audited by the Media Rating Coucil. The reason this is part of the cable companies agenda is the Nielsen Monitor-Plus service isn't currently accredited and is the key part of the commercial minute ratings for Nielsen.
Last, they want to be sure that the data is reliable and able to be used to accurately predict and plan for buying national TV advertising over the long term.
With over $60 billion dollars at stake, everyone wants to be sure that they get this right and that it can be trusted to provide the platform whereby their "currency" of data is more reliable than money. There's a lot at stake for everybody.
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