News Corp and Nielsen end ratings dispute

NEW YORK - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said on Wednesday it settled a dispute with Nielsen Media Research under which the dominant US television ratings agency is spending US$50 million ($76 million) to enhance a new system for gauging viewership.

The eight-year agreement comes after Nielsen's introduction of local people meters, an electronic device which replaced the decades-long use of handwritten viewer diaries.

News Corp. and civil rights activists had argued more than two years ago that the local people meters undercounted minority viewers. The company supported a political lobby group opposing the shift.

Nielsen, owned by privately held VNU, said on Wednesday it would invest the money to boost response rates from young people and minorities as part of the deal.

The company said it will spend the funds on advertising its new service and hiring more field staff to coach families participating in the ratings service.

"We're very pleased to put our differences with Nielsen behind us and to usher in a new era of constructive and even deeper relations between our two companies," said News Corp. executive vice president of corporate affairs, Gary Ginsberg.

"Nielsen's willingness to take concrete and ongoing steps to ensure that its measurement systems accurately count all viewers was critical to achieving this deal," he said.

Nielsen will provide audience measurement services for 49 News Corp. television entities under the deal that took more than a year to broker and which consolidates more than 150 individual agreements between the companies.

Ratings services will cover the Fox broadcast network, cable's Fox News and satellite provider DirecTV nationwide.

Nielsen will also provide News Corp. with people meter ratings for Fox stations in local markets covered by the service. News Corp.'s Fox owns 35 local television stations.

Networks and local TV stations rely on Nielsen data to sell commercial time and even the smallest swings in viewership can translate into millions of dollars in advertising revenue.

Nielsen had used people meters since 1987 to track daily national TV viewing, but only began to apply the system to local ratings on a city-by-city basis beginning in 2002.

The tracking firm had also initially faced opposition from US Spanish language broadcaster Univision Communications .

- REUTERS