FORMER CNN BOSS BLASTS NIELSEN RATINGS

Jonathan Klein, who as CNN president saw the ratings for the cable news network spiral downward during his tenure, has joined the attack on the current ratings system, which escalated following Nielsen’s recent admission that it had been reporting inaccurate ratings for seven months. Appearing on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday, Klein remarked that when he looked at the ratings, he saw "a very narrow snapshot of one type of behavior – how many people are sitting in front of a couch watching TV – when, in fact, we know that it’s really a panorama. You know, media consumption is about squeezing [TV] in amidst a lot of other things — tweeting, cooking, reading, putting your kids to bed, waking them up, whatever. And so, they never felt reliable." Although Nielsen maintains that the recent glitch only affected "a very small amount of total viewing," it was enough the change the standings of the evening newscasts. Nielsen had first said that ABC World News Tonight had beaten NBC Nightly News for the first time in years. But the revised numbers put NBC back on top again.