Starting this fall ESPN, and other sports networks, will get a boost in their bottom line ratings as Nielsen starts counting viewers outside their homes. The Nielsen National Out-of-Home Reporting Service will count TV viewing in such places as restaurants, bars, hotels and gyms.
It couldn’t come at a better time for ESPN as it fights against cord cutting and diminishing advertising dollars. Nielsen will have 77,000 Portable People Meters (PPM) out and about this fall. They are about the size of a pager that picks up an audio encoding from a nearby television. Right now ESPN and Fox are the only networks signed up for the service.