GMA denies part in AGB Nielsen scandal

GMA-7 on Tuesday dismissed talk it was the television network that allegedly rigged the ratings administered by survey firm AGB Nielsen Media Research.

"The alleged informant of ABS-CBN must be referring to a station other than GMA Network in the case it filed against AGB Nielsen," it said in a statement.

The statement from ABS-CBN's informant did not jive with information that GMA was the network alleged as the one that cheated in TV meters installed in some homes in Bacolod City to measure viewership.

GMA's statement came after ABS-CBN sued AGB Nielsen for the alleged anomalies in the way it conducted ratings on TV programs.

ABS-CBN spokesman Bong Osorio said the network filed a case against AGB Nielsen after discovering "a systematic, organized and well funded attempt" to bribe metered households used to gauge viewer behavior and preference.

"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.

Osorio said that to measure TV ratings nationwide, meters are installed in randomly sampled households to check the viewing behavior of people in the areas covered. These households are considered as representative after passing statistical standards set by the research agency.

"The identity of these metered households is kept secure so that no outside entity can influence their behavior. This ensures that the ratings that come from these homes reflect their true behavior," Osorio said.

He said ABS-CBN was approached by a person who confessed that he was hired by another TV network to locate and bribe metered households in Bacolod to switch to a different channel and thus influence TV ratings in that area. ABS-CBN later verified the information with some of the households allegedly approached by the informant.

abs-cbnNEWS.com is the online news department of ABS-CBN Interactive, Inc., an ABS-CBN subsidiary.