\o7MENTION \f7the term "TV industry" and people might conjure up a glamorous image of Kate Walsh and Patrick Dempsey in formal attire, splashed by klieg lights. But what really rules the profession is mathematical and dull and not sexy at all. It's those statistics known as ratings, and they're about to form the basis for a major behind-the-scenes battle.
Every network has a research department that slices and dices the numbers from Nielsen Media Research, in hopes of convincing advertisers that tens of millions are watching or, if that fails, that at least a goodly portion of high-income, highly suggestible people ages 18 to 49 are watching. TV research is about as scintillating as an Internal Revenue Service form, but these industry drones do the scut work that winds up paying for Walsh's pedicures and Dempsey's hair gel.
Right now, though, the big TV networks are on a collision course with the advertisers that subsidize their shows, including the big hits like ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," Fox's "American Idol" and NBC's "Heroes." The battle has the potential to get very ugly indeed over the next few weeks. And it's all about ratings -- or, more specifically, how to measure and assign monetary values to the rapidly dwindling broadcast TV audience in our era of TiVo and the Internet.
Why should you, the average viewer, care?
Because what happens will decide how and what you watch, what devices you watch it on and how much you pay for that privilege. And although no one has all the answers, these questions are going to be decided starting \o7now\f7, not at some fuzzy point in the unseen future.
Today, NBC will officially unveil its fall schedule for advertisers in New York, with other networks following this week. Then the networks' salespeople will enter several weeks of negotiations with advertisers' representatives over the bulk of commercial time, which is bought in advance for the new season -- an annual rite known as "the upfront." Last year, advertisers salted nearly $9 billion among the five English-language broadcast networks during these preseason negotiations. Both sides seem to agree that the figure will likely be flat or even lower this year, as networks frantically try to hold the line against years of audience erosion.
Of course, advertisers and TV networks have had a love-hate relationship for more than half a century. But this year will bring some key differences.
