AGB Nielsen names GMA-7 in ratings tampering issue

AGB Nielsen Media Research Philippines on Wednesday identified GMA-7 as the television network being linked to bribery attempts to unduly influence TV ratings being harvested by the research firm in Bacolod City.

In an interview, AGB Nielsen general manager Maya Reforma said an informant revealed that it was GMA-7 that allegedly funded an operation to bribe metered homes in Bacolod City to watch GMA shows and influence the ratings.

Reforma said GMA-7 conducted promotional activities in Bacolod City to increase viewership for the network. She added that the research firm has yet to confirm if the activities influenced TV ratings in the area.

She said there was no reason for the research firm to stop the ratings surveys since the tampering could be an isolated incident.

Last week, ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. sued AGB Nielsen Media Research Philippines for continuing to release possibly tainted nationwide TV ratings despite information that metered households used to gauge the ratings might have been bribed.

"The Filipino people and the entire media industry deserve to know the truth. We in ABS-CBN have discovered what can only be viewed as a systematic, organized and well funded attempt to cheat in the ratings," ABS-CBN Chairman and CEO Eugenio Lopez III said in a statement.

Vivian Tin, ABS-CBN Research and Business Analysis chief, said ABS-CBN informed AGB Nielsen Media Research Philippines last November 20 about the bribery attempts and urged the research agency "to stop the release of erroneous data, check their panel nationwide and resume release only when they can guarantee the integrity of the data."

She said the network filed a P63 million civil suit against AGB Nielsen after it continued to release the weekly TV ratings even after the informant met with AGB Nielsen officials. "They did go with the informant and he did show them the homes. According to the informant, the homes that he showed them were verified to be AGB Nielsen homes," she told reporters at 9501 restaurant.

ABS-CBN lawyer Maxim Uy said the network sued the research firm for breach of contract and for failing to keep as confidential information on metered households. The P63 million lawsuit is broken down into P45 million in license fees paid by the network to AGB Nielsen, P15 million in moral and exemplary damages and P3 million in attorneys' fees.

Uy said the network also requested the Quezon City Regional Trial Court for a temporary restraining order on AGB surveys.

GMA-7 reaction to tampering issue

On Tuesday GMA-7 denied that it was the station being referred to in ABS-CBN's lawsuit against AGB Nielsen.

In a statement, GMA-7 said it did not make sense to conduct alleged bribery attempts in Bacolod since the research firm does not release separate ratings data for the city.

The network also cast doubt on the informant's claim that he and six other people were able to locate 89 meter devices in Bacolod.

"Bacolod accounts for only about eight percent of the total urban TV households in the Visayas, according to computations based on the National Statistics Office population figures and AC Nielsen figures from their 2000 Fact Book. Eighty-nine devices are already more than 22 percent of the total panel homes in the Visayas," the network said.

"Besides, GMA Network's ratings in the provinces - particularly in the Visayas and Mindanao - have not shown any significant improvement since July of 2007 when it started to subscribe to the ratings of AGB. If there was any involvement on GMA's part on the alleged tampering of panel homes in the area, then its ratings there should have experienced significant increases," it added.

The network said it has also complained to AGB about the unexplainable disparity between the cable and non-cable ratings of GMA's programs
"which do not obtain in respect to ABS-CBN's programs."

"It is only in the Philippines that the ratings of programs on non-cable or free TV households exhibit a very different behavior from the cable households. Coincidentally, the Philippines is also the only country in the world where a competing free-to-air TV station also operates or controls the dominant cable company," the network said.

Cable television operator Central CATV Inc. is owned 66.5 percent by a Lopez-controlled holding firm SkyVision Corp. and 33.5 percent by Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. ABS-CBN owns 10.2 percent of SkyVision Corp.

How ratings are harvested

Tin said TV ratings are harvested by measuring the viewing behavior of TV audience in select households.

In the case of AGB Nielsen, the research firm chose 1,540 panel homes for its national urban television audience measurement (NUTAM) panel. The NUTAM homes represent 90 percent of the total urban population with TV sets or about 37 million individuals age 2 and above in the country.

In the selected homes, meters are attached to all TV sets in each household. The meter comes with a handset that has a button for each member of the household. Each household member is instructed to push the button assigned to them every time he or she is watching TV. The meter attached to the TV is designed to identify the channel to which the TV is on. By using the handset, the meter will know which programs the household member watches and how long he watches TV.

Once accumulated, the data from the handsets and meters will show the different types of people watching different channels and programs.

Tin said any attempt to unnaturally influence the behavior of members of the NUTAM panel like giving them incentives to watch programs that they do not want to watch will render a panel "unrepresentative." She said an unrepresentative panel will give wrong information and will lead TV networks to produce programs that people will not really want to see.

She said it was difficult to know the overall effect of the bribery attempts on ABS-CBN's ratings. "We don’t know to what degree that activity has impacted our ratings as a part of the national ratings in Bacolod and we cannot say that it’s not happening in any other areas so it is really hard to say how big the breach is, which is where I go back to what we have asked AGB to do. You have to make sure that the same breach has not happened anywhere else," she told reporters.

In a video presentation presented by ABS-CBN officials, the informant said he was hired to conduct the bribery operation late last year. At least seven people were allegedly involved in the operation to bribe metered households in Bacolod, he said.

He said they were able to identify the metered households by following a certain Edward who was assigned by AGB Nielsen to install the TV meters in Bacolod. He said they used motorbikes to follow Edward who usually rode a multi-cab with the plate number GNU-107 when going to the NUTAM households. He said Edward did not know he was being followed.

The informant said that after the meters were installed, their group then approached the members of the household and told them to switch to another channel in exchange for P500 in cash plus groceries. He added that many of the people they approached accepted the bribes because of financial hardship.

The informant said he was given a monthly salary of P6,200 plus P115 cellphone load allowance to conduct the operation. He said he and other members in the bribery operation received instructions from a "backchecker" from Iloilo.

He said he was able to identify 89 metered households when he was still working for the bribery operation.

The informant said their group also monitored metered households chosen by TNS-Trends but later focused on AGB Nielsen households because their employer wanted to influence the ratings. He said their employer wanted to cut down on ABS-CBN's lead in nationwide TV ratings by tampering with the viewing habits of metered households in Bacolod.

Source: abs-cbnnews.com