Nielsen Media Research Company

The television universe continues to grow. With the wraps about to come off the fall season, Nielsen Media Research, the company that compiles the weekly TV ratings, estimates that there are 109.6 million households with television in the United States, up from 108.4 million at this time last year. It puts the number of viewers in those homes at 277.9 million, up from 275.6 million last year. Los Angeles remains the nation's No. 2 TV market, with 5.

The U.S. is a nation of even bigger couch potatoes than previously realized. Nielsen Co. left little doubt Monday when it reported that television use is at an all-time high in the U.S., with home TVs turned on for an average of 8 hours, 18 minutes a day. A decade ago, American households watched an average of 7 hours, 15 minutes a day. Television continued to be the screen of choice despite increasing competition from computers.

Nielsen Media Research, the company that measures America's viewing habits for the television industry, is getting low ratings from its highest-paying customers--the networks. "The Nielsens are an antiquated, inaccurate monopoly that hasn't kept up with the way people watch television today," said Don Ohlmeyer, president of NBC West Coast. "Norway has better TV measurement than we do in this country."

ONE week into the fall TV season, and we already have some notions about which prime-time series are likely to stick around for a while. "Bionic Woman" and "Private Practice" look like hits. "Gossip Girl" and "K-Ville"? Not so much. Don't cry yet, though -- your favorite underperforming new show may not necessarily be headed for the same fate as Josie Maran on "Dancing With the Stars."

An executive of the TV ratings service Nielsen Media Research acknowledged Wednesday that its audience figures for the Los Angeles area probably undercount viewers of Spanish-language stations, but Nielsen said it has no plan to alter its method of collecting data. The Nielsen measurements have a big impact on television station revenues because sponsors make advertising decisions based on audience size.

In a nod to the rapidly changing entertainment landscape, Nielsen Media Research said Wednesday that it would triple the size of its TV ratings sample audience by 2011 to provide more accurate measurement. "Audience fragmentation continues to increase," said Sara Erichson, a Nielsen executive vice president for client services. "This is an acknowledgment that people watch television in different ways, and this is where television is headed."

Nielsen Media Research, the largest tracker of U.S. TV viewing habits, said it might sample more minority households with its local "people meter" devices to ensure that the service accurately measures audiences. The proposed change at New York-based Nielsen comes in response to a report released by a task force set up to ensure that minority viewers are properly counted. That recommendation and others must be approved by Nielsen's clients, a company spokesman said. News Corp.

TV sets in American homes are on more than ever, Nielsen Media Research reported Thursday. During the yearlong television season that ended Sept. 18, the average U.S. household was tuned into TV for 8 hours, 11 minutes per day, the ratings company said -- an increase of 2.7% over the previous season and 12.5% higher than 10 years ago.

Crime paid last week, as NBC's "Law & Order" franchise buoyed that network, while "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"--the most-watched show for the fourth time in six weeks--helped CBS post a narrow victory, according to viewing estimates issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

ONE week into the fall TV season, and we already have some notions about which prime-time series are likely to stick around for a while. "Bionic Woman" and "Private Practice" look like hits. "Gossip Girl" and "K-Ville"? Not so much. Don't cry yet, though -- your favorite underperforming new show may not necessarily be headed for the same fate as Josie Maran on "Dancing With the Stars."

In a nod to the rapidly changing entertainment landscape, Nielsen Media Research said Wednesday that it would triple the size of its TV ratings sample audience by 2011 to provide more accurate measurement. "Audience fragmentation continues to increase," said Sara Erichson, a Nielsen executive vice president for client services. "This is an acknowledgment that people watch television in different ways, and this is where television is headed."

After decades of being shunted to the sidelines, Spanish-language media outlets have now joined the big leagues of TV research. Ratings giant Nielsen Media Research today plans to pull the plug on a separate service that it created 15 years ago to measure the size of Latino TV audiences. Latinos are now so important to the overall TV ratings picture that it would be misleading to relegate them to a separate system.

Influential research firm Nielsen/NetRatings said Tuesday that it would begin to emphasize how long visitors spend on websites, rather than how many times they view a page, when comparing sites. The move shook up website popularity rankings, favoring sites such as AOL, Yahoo and others that attract heavy users of e-mail and instant messaging over sites such as Google and Fox Interactive Media's MySpace.

More than 33 million people have used mobile phones to access the Internet this year, according to Nielsen Media Research, which announced a new effort to measure such use Wednesday. With Nielsen known primarily for its ratings service for television viewing, the announcement is another indication of how it is trying to keep up with changing entertainment options. At first, Nielsen is offering information culled from interviews of the 30,000 people in its TV sample.

Nielsen Co. has begun monitoring Americans' viewing of TV commercials, possibly writing new rules for the sale of television advertising time. Nielsen has for years calculated the size of the audience for TV shows based on the number of people watching during the initial telecast. It currently installs devices in select households' television sets. What's new is that Nielsen is measuring not only who's watching the shows but who's watching the commercials.

College students will no longer be invisible to the company that measures TV viewing once they leave home. Starting this week, Nielsen Media Research will begin tracking what college students are watching in their dorms, a development that could significantly boost the ratings -- and advertising income -- for programs popular among young people. College-age students had been included only when they watched TV in their parents' homes.

Television audience tracker Nielsen Media Research on Wednesday unveiled wide-ranging plans to expand its coverage to the Internet, mobile phones and other gadgets as it adapts to rapidly changing ways people view TV programs. The move by Nielsen and sister company NetRatings Inc.

Nielsen Media Research said it would begin this summer to measure how many times TV viewers see sponsorship signs at sports stadiums, a move that could open the door to more extensive use of this advertising. Use of sponsorship signage is common in sports. The involvement of Nielsen, which has a monopoly on television ratings, will help determine a value for these sponsorships, said Neal Pilson, a sports television consultant and former CBS Sports president.

Nielsen Media Research said it would introduce a U.S. ratings service in late May that tracks how many people watch individual television commercials. It had delayed the launch by about six months to settle disagreements about how the ratings would work. Nielsen's new ratings system will enable media buyers to determine how many viewers stay tuned during commercial breaks and how many record shows using a digital video recorder.

Television ratings giant Nielsen Media Research on Friday delayed the launch of a controversial system to measure viewership for commercials after encountering stiff resistance from TV programmers who believed the ratings system wasn't ready for prime time. "We have $50 billion in advertising revenue riding on this," said Alan Wurtzel, NBC Universal's president of research. "There's no value in rushing to do something before it's ready.