Nielsen to start tracking college students viewing habbits

Nielsen Media Research announced on Monday it would begin to count college student who live away from home when it determines television ratings, according to Reuters.

The group has traditionally left out the out-of-home viewing audience when calculating television ratings, much to the ire of cable television networks. Nielsen will begin to calculate the new ratings on January 29. College students have often been calculated into their guardian's home, but studies show they watch up to 30 hours a week.

"You tell me if they are watching television when they go to school, or if zero is the right number (to count for viewing)," Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer at Turner Broadcasting told Reuters. "Zero is not the right number."

Turner Broadcasting is expecting a major increase in the numbers for its Adult Swin programming on Cartoon Network.

"It's going to be significant," Wakshlag told the wire service.The new measures could increase ratings numbers by 15 percent, according to Total TV Monitor, a diary service that was developed by ESPN and others to figure out how much out-of-home viewing was being missed in traditional measures, Reuters reported."The college segment is clearly the most important segment of out-of-home viewing," Artie Bulgrin, senior vp research/sales development at ESPN told Reuters. "It's not everything, but it's the most important."