|
The Nielsen television ratings may be the gold
standard for measuring television viewership, but
Amir Ajizadeh
thinks they’re full of holes. The rating
service, which meters television usage in a sampling of
5,000 households, may be under-counting minorities, he
says. And just because a person turns on a TV set
doesn't guarantee that anyone is in the same room, much
less watching it. Furthermore, the Nielsen ratings
don’t provide qualitative information – people may
be watching, he asks, but do they like what
they’re seeing?
Ajizadeh, a Leesburg entrepreneur, thinks he can do a
better job. By the end of the summer, he expects his
start-up company, iTvRatings.com, to be getting
responses from 50,000 television watchers. And instead
of tracking the amount of time a TV set stays on,
he’ll be collecting data the viewers feel moved to
vote upon. “iTvRatings.com offers the public the
unique opportunity to directly vote for their favorite
TV shows while the show is on the air," he says.
"This information can be shared with the TV
networks in real-time."
iTvRatings represents a bold move – some might say a
foolhardy one – for someone with no formal background
in broadcast television or media buying. But Ajizadeh,
who was born in Iran 36 years ago and fled with his
family to the U.S. after the fall of the Shah, is no
stranger to risk. He’s started and sold a succession
of businesses, including a residential construction
company and a brokerage that hooked up sub-prime lenders
with used car dealerships. “People tell me, ‘You are
the biggest chance taker I know,’” he says.
“Every success story begins with a kid who would never
give up, he adds. “I’m that kid.”
Ajizadeh conceived the idea for launching a Nielsen
competitor about four years ago, but he didn’t do much
with it until talking to a friend, Bill Campbell, now
his chief internet architect. The two had gotten to know
each other in the cafeteria at WorldCom, where Ajizadeh
had worked as an account rep and Campbell as a web
developer before they were both laid off. After noodling
the idea around, they went live in August 2003 at www.itvratings.com.
The pitch to viewers is simple: Express yourself. Sound
off to the networks. Tell them your likes and dislikes.
Submit suggestions. To spur participation, Ajizadeh is
giving away televisions through a lottery-like contest
in which viewers enjoy better odds of winning the more
they vote. He’s not spending money on advertising or
promotion, preferring to let television viewers find his
website through the Internet or word of mouth. So far,
he insists, he’s happy with the growth in numbers, and
he’s sticking with his goal of obtaining one million
participants a year from now.
So, where’s the money? Once he achieves a critical
mass of viewers, Ajizadeh says, he will generate revenue
from submitting real-time feedback to networks and
broadcasters. He’ll provide detailed customer response
literally episode by episode, broken down age, gender,
ethnicity and geographic region. “Raw information
received from public participants will allow for
analysis far beyond what is currently offered by other
rating services.” He's so confident in his system for
setting up the database, classifying members and
distributing data that he has obtained patent protection
for it.
No lavish venture funding for iTvRatings.com. The
enterprise is a classic
start up, run out of home offices and a warehouse. Besides his partner Bill Campbell, who is
handling website and database development, he employs a
part-time assistant, two part-time statisticians –
“and a law firm."
Ajizadeh is bankrolling the project out of his own
pocket. At this highly risky stage of development –
before he has proven that the concept can work –
he’s not looking for outside investors, or even
customers. His focus now is attracting TV viewers. He
refuses to say how many viewers he has contributing to
iTvRatings.com, noting only that he can boast
participants from every one of the states in the
continental U.S. But he expects to have enough feedback
by June to provide meaningful data to the networks.
So, how will the Ajizadeh saga end? Will television
viewers flock to his website? Will broadcasters find his
data valuable enough to pay for? Will the giant Nielsen
Media Research copy his idea and swat him away like a
pesky gnat?
Tune back in this June – same time, same station –
to find out.
-- April 7, 2004
|
|
|
