The new January 6+ ratings are in!

[davideduardo]

My experience has been that if an encoder doesn't check in after a couple hours, Nielsen reaches out to the station to alert them that they may want to restart the encoder, or switch to their backup encoder. With that in mind, I find it hard to believe that an encoder was locked up for an entire book.

Not only that, but the data is processed weekly for the reports. If a station is not encoded for several days in a week, it will be noted and followed up on. It would not go on for multiple weeks without Nielsen and the station noting the change in the weeklies.

If they are subscribed to the advance data, the station would know even sooner. But Nielsen would sense it within days.

However, Nielsen only gets meter data when "ET Phones Home" when docked for recharging each night. They don't have instant moment to moment data.

The encoder itself is supposed to reach out and touch someone if it is failing, but that requires the box be able to talk; I don't know what senses a total failure.

 

[Kelly A]

The encoder itself is supposed to reach out and touch someone if it is failing, but that requires the box be able to talk; I don't know what senses a total failure.

As was explained to me, the encoder sends out frequent health checks via SNMP messaging. If Nielsen HQ stops seeing the encoder check-in, an alarm is generated, and someone reaches out to the station. A few months ago we were patched-around an encoder in the program path while cleaning up some once deemed 'temporary' cabling. Less than ten minutes after patching around the encoder my cell phone rang. It was Nielsen calling to alert me that one of our encoders appeared to be off line.

 

[davideduardo]

As was explained to me, the encoder sends out frequent health checks via SNMP messaging. If Nielsen HQ stops seeing the encoder check-in, an alarm is generated, and someone reaches out to the station. A few months ago we were patched-around an encoder in the program path while cleaning up some once deemed 'temporary' cabling. Less than ten minutes after patching around the encoder my cell phone rang. It was Nielsen calling to alert me that one of our encoders appeared to be off line.

The problem is that many stations have delegated the advisory notice to people who "move on" and the station for a while / forever after does not have a valid contact. I saw that happen for over 10 days for a station I was involved with and it resulted in a "nobody's fault" passing of the buck.

My recommendation after that was to have more than one person always on the list, and each person would be responsible for correcting the list were the other to no longer be involved. But that was thought to be too complicated, so the same thing happened in another market just a year later.

 

[Kelly A]

The problem is that many stations have delegated the advisory notice to people who "move on" and the station for a while / forever after does not have a valid contact. I saw that happen for over 10 days for a station I was involved with and it resulted in a "nobody's fault" passing of the buck.

I suppose anything is possible, but having been the CE for both KOMO-TV and the radio group (which included KPLZ), it's not like there is just one engineering contact person who may have moved on.

I have to imagine that Nielsen would reach out to station management, potentially even their corporate contact at Sinclair if they had no encoding for several weeks. They don't want their client upset and asking 'why didn't you tell me we weren't encoding?' Especially with the new world of contract engineer's, a management contact at the station or group would be particularly important.

 

[seatownmedia]

News and talk seem to be king here. I would guess the current ongoing covid situation is probably a reason. That said, rock stations are doing well. Not sure about the KPLZ number, I am not close enough to the situation. But it really doesn’t matter in the end, media buys will only look at the raw numbers. The next month will either confirm or deny this major slump.