Media Rating Council

The Media Rating Council (MRC) is a United States-based nonprofit organization that manages accreditation for media research and rating purposes.

The MRC has five full-time employees, and 150 member organizations. It performs accreditations for rating and research companies like Nielsen, comScore, and Arbitron. It is funded by member dues, which run in the thousands of dollars.

The MRC does not conduct the audit of the companies being accredited itself. The audits are done by accounting firms such as Ernst & Young. The company being accredited pays for the audit, with fees that could be in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Each time a company that was previously audited changes its methodology, it needs to be audited again to continue to qualify for MRC accreditation.

In 1960, United States Representative Oren Harris of Arkansas, chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce as well as its Special Subcommittee on Investigations, began investigating broadcast ratings. This led to a series of public hearings beginning March 5, 1963, and ending September 23, 1964, called the Harris Committee Hearings on Broadcast Ratings. The 22-page final report would be produced on January 13, 1966.

Based on the hearings, the committee felt that rather than government regulation, it would be better for the industry to fund its own organization to review and accredit audience rating services. This organization was founded as the Broadcast Rating Council in 1964. The organization would later become the Media Rating Council.

The first version of the MRC Minimum Standards became effective on March 31, 1964. The Standards relate to: (a) ethics and operations, (b) disclosures, and (c) electronic delivery. The MRC has maintained and updated the standards since they first became effective.

In 2004, Nielsen made updates to its method of measuring television ratings, switching over to "local people meters" in an effort to improve the accuracy of ratings. The new method went through the MRC's accreditation process, including an audit by accounting firm Ernst & Young. Based on the audit, MRC decided on May 28, 2004 to deny accreditation, while praising the overall idea and distinguishing itself from the Don't Count Us Coalition, a set of sharp critics of the new methodology. Nielsen had delayed the rollout of the changes in New York from April 8 to June 3, but decided to continue with the (delayed) rollout, rolling out to New York on June 3, Los Angeles on July 8, and Chicago on August 5.

...
Wikipedia