Nielsen Media Research can track virtually every type of viewership video games, billboards, Web sites but has struggled with one particular demographic: minority homes.
Nielsen has been drawing fire since replacing the handwritten viewer diaries it had used to measure viewership for years with electronic Local People Meters. The company reported a sharp decrease in viewership for television shows that featured minorities. African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and other ethnic communities. That suggested the problem wasn’t with the audience, but with Nielsen.
Feeling the heat, Nielsen turned to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, Bishop W. Todd Ervin and from 1,000 Churches Connected and several community leaders to address the questions at a forum.
“It is hard to speak for people if you don’t speak to them,” Jackson said. “Accountability matters.”
Los Angeles is the second largest media market in the United States, with roughly $3 billion spent on advertising here.
The event was one in a series of community outreach meetings nationwide to address such concerns, and Nielsen has established minority advisory councils for the African-American, Latino and Asian-American populations. The company has committed to including a “representative sample” of all segments of the population in all of its ratings data.
Toy Soldiering
The Los Angeles Ballet was scheduled to begin its inaugural season with performances of “The Nutcracker” at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills on Dec. 2 and 3.
The company moves on to the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center on Dec. 23 and 24 and finishes the holiday season at Glendale’s Alex Theater on Dec. 30 and 31.
Like most ballet companies, selling the holiday performances will be essential to establish financial security.
The non-profit ballet was founded by the husband-and-wife dancer team of Thordal Christensen, a former artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet, and Collen Neary, a r & #233;p & #233;titeur for the George Balanchine Trust. To date, more than 1,000 performance tickets have been sold, as well as and several hundred subscriptions.
The Nutcracker is being staged for about $1 million, some of which came from donations and sponsorship outside the ballet’s projected operating budget of $1.7 million this year. The Los Angeles Ballet’s season ticket subscriptions range from $90 to $245.
Though none of the venues are technically within Los Angeles city limits, the divide-and-conquer strategy could prove useful in drawing an audience from a far flung population like that of Los Angeles.
The ballet secured its 21-dancer roster this summer, drawing ballerinas from the Royal Danish, the New York City and the Bolshoi ballets, as well as guest principals from the American Ballet Theater. The dancers are signed to 21-week contracts.
This most recent edition of the Los Angeles Ballet isn’t the first troupe to attempt to get off the ground here. The first Los Angeles Ballet, directed by John Clifford, ran from 1974 to 1985 but folded due to funding problems and a lack of a permanent home theater.
War Drums
The Writers Guild of America has told the studios what they can do with their olive branch.
The guild’s leaders have spurned an industry proposal to launch negotiations in January. Instead, they’ve insisted they won’t be ready to start until September, less than two months before the Oct. 31 expiration of the current contract.
“I’m very disappointed,” said Nick Counter, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers.
On the film side, the delay means an acceleration of production and stockpiling of scripts, followed by a “de facto strike” next summer as studios stop launching film production once they can no longer be wrapped by Oct. 31. In TV, the prospect of a work stoppage means studios and networks will try to shoot more episodes of scripted series and will be less inclined to launch series while planning for more reality, news and sports programming.
WGA West exec director David Young said: “We are currently meeting with our members on contract issues, as well as continuing our dialogue with sister guilds in Hollywood. We fully expect that a fair agreement will be reached in our upcoming negotiation.”
Some execs attribute the WGA’s move to gamesmanship, designed to show studios and networks that the scribes are serious about getting a bigger slice of the pie. Other speculation for the delay centered on the WGA betting that the extra time will clarify the outlook on which digital delivery platform will become dominant.
Others, like “Law & Order” producer Dick Wolf, see a strike.
“It’s a Neolithic tactic,” he told Daily Variety, “but it’s a clear message that they want to have a work stoppage. I don’t have to be the Delphic oracle to have seen this coming.”
Both sides appear to have forgotten the economic damage inflicted during the 1988 writers strike, which lasted five months. Network viewership has declined every year since then.
Staff reporter Anne Riley-Katz can be reached at
[email protected]
or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 225.
