People Meters

They are called LPM’s. That’s an acronym for Local People Meter, and as of January the Dallas/Ft. Worth has become what is known in the television business as a “metered market.” That means that when a program comes on a particular station, the station can at every few seconds monitor a real time sample of the number of viewers watching or…not watching. It’s odd that Dallas has been left out of this type of Nielsen sampling for so long. Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and other major cities have had it for years, and with DFW becoming known as such a “metro” area entering the ranks of those with culture, restaurants, nightlife and so on, it seems that someone has been dragging their…well, ratings books. I thought some of you would like to know that we’ve entered the 21st century and the DFW TV ratings game just got bloody.