Nielsen and Charter Communications to Commercialize Set Top Tuning Data for Potential Measurement Uses

Nielsen and Charter Communications to Commercialize Set Top Tuning Data for Potential Measurement Uses

NEW YORK, March 12 /PRNewswire/ -- The Nielsen Company and Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) announced today an agreement to commercialize the use of anonymous digital set top box (STB) data for analytical and potential audience measurement purposes for television.

As part of this agreement, Charter is providing Nielsen with anonymous STB viewing data from almost 330,000 households in the Los Angeles area, which Nielsen will develop into commercially available analyses and reports of digital television viewership.

To protect customers' privacy and maintain the confidentiality of their viewing preferences, Charter will only provide data in an anonymous form to prevent Nielsen from identifying the personal information or identity of any individual Charter customer. Similarly, all Nielsen reports will contain only anonymous and aggregated data.

This research will be the first time that census-level tuning data and panel-based people meter viewing data will be combined to produce expanded household and demographic reporting from a local television market.

"Charter is committed to improving the precision of local market measurement," said Jim Heneghan, Senior Vice President, Advertising Sales for Charter. "By working with Nielsen, we are ensuring that our advertiser and agency clients get the most reliable data possible to evaluate their media buys."

"At a time of rapid technological change in the television industry, Nielsen is inventing new ways to measure how people watch television," said Jed Meyer, Senior Vice President of Nielsen DigitalPlus. "Through these studies, we will provide Charter with new insights on the consumption of all digital video. At the same time, we will be investigating the potential of digital set top boxes and the data they generate to enhance our existing audience measurement services."

The Charter STB analyses will be available to Nielsen's clientele in the second quarter of 2008.

About Charter Communications:

Charter Communications, Inc. is a leading broadband communications company and the third-largest publicly traded cable operator in the United States. Charter provides a full range of advanced broadband services, including advanced Charter Digital Cable(R) video entertainment programming, Charter High-Speed(R) Internet access, and Charter Telephone(R). Charter Business(TM) similarly provides scalable, tailored, and cost-effective broadband communications solutions to business organizations, such as business-to- business Internet access, data networking, video and music entertainment services, and business telephone. Charter's advertising sales and production services are sold under the Charter Media(R) brand. More information about Charter can be found at www.charter.com.

About The Nielsen Company

The Nielsen Company is a global information and media company with leading market positions in marketing information (ACNielsen), media information (Nielsen Media Research), online intelligence (NetRatings and BuzzMetrics), mobile measurement, trade shows and business publications (Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek). The privately held company is active in more than 100 countries, with headquarters in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and New York, USA. For more information, please visit, www.nielsen.com.

Source: The Nielsen Company

CONTACT: Anita Lamont, for Charter Communications, Inc.,
+1-314-543-2215; or Gary Holmes, for The Nielsen Company, +1-646-654-8975

Web site: http://www.nielsen.com/
http://www.charter.com/

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Profile: International Entertainment