Nielsen has said it will launch electronic people meter ratings service in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and San Francisco next year. The people meter service will be expanded to include Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Detroit and Dallas-Ft. Worth in 2005, and Atlanta the following year.

NBC, ABC, Comcast, Time Warner Cable in New York and Los Angeles and Adlink in Los Angeles have backed Nielsen for the local People Meter service.

An official release informs that the Nielsen Peoplemeter will replace the current meter-diary measurement system in the top 10 markets. This is expected to have a major impact on every aspect of the television business. Local Peoplemeters will enable media executives to buy and sell commercial time and make programming, scheduling and promotional decisions continuously, instead of waiting for sweeps months for the demographic ratings the release states.

The top 10 television markets include nearly 32 million TV households, or 30 per cent of all US television households. More than $8 billion is spent just on local television advertising in the top 10 markets. At the same time, Nielsen Media Research intends to nearly double the size of the national people meter sample over the next four years. The national peoplemeter sample produces the ratings that are the currency for all broadcast and cable networks and national syndication sales.

NBC will support Nielsen Peoplemeter service in its owned-station markets: Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. ABC has agreed to support Nielsen People Meter service for its owned television stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

The US' largest cable television service Comcast will support the service in all of the top 10 markets, including Boston where it already subscribes to the service.

In addition Nielsen is expanding the size of its National Peoplemeter Sample. The present national sample of approximately 5,000 households will grow to nearly 10,000 households when the expansion is completed in 2006. As part of the sample expansion plan, when local Peoplemeter service is introduced into each of the top 10 markets, Nielsen will include these homes, on a weighted basis, into the National Sample.

Ratings from the Nielsen Peoplemeter are used as the currency for more than $30 billion in national annual advertising expenditures in the US. The Nielsen Peoplemeter was introduced into the US in 1987 to measure national viewership for broadcast and cable networks and well as nationally syndicated television programmes.

The Top 10 US Television Markets