TNS, the market insight and information company, is currently in a war of the ratings with Nielsen. If you ask us, it's not a moment too soon. The recently acquired WPP company is taking the monopolistic Nielsen head on with their service DirectView, which uses ses satellite company DirecTV's set-top boxes to collect data on live and time-shifted audience ratings on a "second-by-second" basis. We got a chance to ask George Shababb, COO, of TNS Media Research, a few questions about their service.

1. CurrentTV and Discovery Communications recently signed up to useTNS's Directview over Nielsen's DigitalPlus. What is it that your company is offering that differs from Nielsen's ratings system?

"TNS Media Research will be launching DIRECTView in January 2009. DIRECTView is a national audience measurement service based on 100,000 households taken from DIRECTV. The service will feature live and time shifted viewing activity as well as second by second commercial tracking. Nielsen’s DigitalPlus is based on a recent data from Charter LA, which I might add TNS MR has also been offering to the market since May 2006.

In this initial phase the households were selected anonymously without any divulging of personally identifiable information to TNS. In Phase II the plan is to bring on an additional 100k households who will be asked to opt-in and provide demographic information.

Yes, especially for many of the smaller networks which go unreported in the Nielsen system and which in aggregate account for about 30% of viewing.