Nielsen sued for "manipulating ratings"

New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV), the first and largest news network in India, has filed a lawsuit against The Nielsen Co., alleging that Nielsen manipulated ratings in return for "bribes" to company officials.  The complaint alleges that Television Audience Measurement, a joint venture between Nielsen and Indian research firm Kandar Media Research, has engaged in "rampant" manipulation of TV ratings in India, for more than eight years.  Further, NDTV alleges when evidence of the problem was presented to Nielsen officials and they promised corrections, none were forthcoming.  Rather, the suit claims, Nielsen focused on cost-cutting moves that exacerbated the problem.
  NDTV says that Nielsen's officers have been "recklessly disregarding" their responsibilities to laws and their customers - and that corporate cost-cutting measures have been one of the main reasons behind their failure to address, much less fix, problems leading to manipulated TV viewership data.

"The primary reason that data could be so easily manipulated in India was due to the persistent refusal of Nielsen and Kantar to provide adequate funds for TAM to increase its sample size and invest in the systems/quality/security procedures," says the lawsuit.
Specifically, the results of viewership data are alleged to be based on a very small number, just 8,000 households. And because of the small sample size and alleged lack of security protocols, corruption is said to have blossomed in a country where "politicians also own cable networks" and "PeopleMeters have been installed at the residences of government officials, where tampering of the data also takes place."

  The problem of data tampering in India has been publicly discussed in industry-wide meetings since 2004.  At a November 2011 conference, a senior NDTV executive outlined some of the ways TAM's data was being manipulated. He charged that some channels were

"subverting the ratings system by 'discovering' the panel homes that have PeopleMeters installed in them, doctoring data emerging from 'parallel homes,' providing a separate TV in select panel homes for viewing while the TV linked to the meter was tuned to specified channels [and] misusing the guest button where up to 10 guests can be shown watching even when there is no one there."

At a meeting last February, a consultant was said to have presented evidence of TAM employees taking bribes to Nielsen representatives.

By April, at another meeting, representatives of Nielsen are said to have "unequivocally admitted that the information provided by NDTV’s Consultant was highly credible," with laptops from TAM officials seized and sent to the U.S. for forensic analysis.
Despite allegedly admitting the corruption and manipulation, NDTV says that all promises to make changes are a "sham" and that bad data continues to get released "recklessly and in pursuit of profits."

The suit goes on to claim that similar data manipulation is going on in other countries - citing Turkey, the Philippines, and the U.S. state of Florida.  It also comes in the wake of several other major data problems for Nielsen in the U.S.  (see this post ), and a report from Pakistan of similar problems in their Peoplemeter panel (although Nielsen is not directly involved in that ratings system).

Sources -  Nielsen Sued for Billions Over Allegedly Manipulated TV Ratings,  The Hollywood Reporter
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