Nielsen reveals it has been undercounting out-of-home viewers

Variety

The ratings service said it recently learned that it has been undercounting out-of-home viewers -- who watch television in offices, bars, hotels and other places -- since September 2020. Nielsen blamed a "software issue" for the problem. “As part of routine testing and quality controls, we recently identified an error that caused an understatement of reported out-of-home audiences for our National TV service," Nielsen said in a statement. "While there is no impact to most telecasts, and no impact to local television, we did find some variances for events that tend to yield larger out-of-home audiences, such as live sporting events. The error has been corrected and Nielsen will be reissuing data from January 2021 to present in order to provide the industry with the most complete data.” Nielsen's revelation comes after the Media Rating Council, an industry body that verifies audience measurement processes, pulled Nielsen's accreditation in September after the ratings company admitted to undercounting viewership during the pandemic. In response to Nielsen's problems, major media companies like NBC Universal, Warner Media and ViacomCBS have been working on launching an audience-measurement alternative.