Arbitron Waits on Nielsen No More Regarding PPM

Arbitron isn’t waiting anymore for Nielsen to decide what level of involvement it wants in the Portable People Meter; the company has moved on.
Arbitron PPM President Pierre Bouvard, in a memo to customers, said the company informed Nielsen “of changes that redefine Nielsen’s role” in the Houston market trial of PPM.
Arbitron has withdrawn its invitation for Nielsen to participate in day-to-day operations of the Houston PPM market trial. Given the progress of that trial, it said that by the time Nielsen would make its decision, the Houston demo market will be producing audience estimates.
Nielsen will still provide access to its meter/diary television audience estimates in Houston so that the industry can compare those to audience estimates produced by PPM.
“Instead of spending time determining how Nielsen might fit into to an already functioning Arbitron organization in Houston, we would rather we spend our time with Nielsen focused on those issues that hold the most promise for bringing the PPM to the marketplace,” stated Bouvard.
At Arbitron’s request, Nielsen has agreed to focus on two of the three current priorities: a look at the audio detection capabilities of the PPM and a study of the issues that a potential joint venture must resolve in order to deploy the PPM as a local market ratings service for radio and television.
Arbitron begins to start releasing comparisons of PPM to diary audience estimates in late August.