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Poltrack: CBS to Release Cable Commercial Minutes if Nielsen Doesn’t

David Poltrack, president of CBS Vision and head of the network’s research operations, says that if the cable industry is successful in convincing Nielsen to withhold data for cable networks when it begins releasing commercial minute ratings in November, CBS will process and release the cable numbers on its own.

Poltrack, who at last week’s NBC-hosted ad hoc summit was vocal in pushing Nielsen to release commercial ratings as soon as possible, has said that getting perfect data isn’t the immediate goal. “The bar is getting something that is stable and that for an advertiser provides a greater degree of accountability for their commercial exposure,” he is quoted as saying in MediaPost.

If Nielsen delays in releasing the data in November, or if it excludes commercial estimates for cable networks, Poltrack has said that CBS’s research group is prepared to launch its own, proprietary analysis of cable networks’ commercial ratings. It is important to begin releasing the data so the industry can begin evaluating it to see whether it is more useful than the current programming ratings, he says.

The cable industry is against the immediate release of the data, believing that it may be flawed in several ways, including the fact that it does not currently measure local cable advertising minutes.