A.C. Nielsen Jr., Who Built Ratings Firm, Dies at 92

Arthur C. Nielsen Jr., who transformed the company his father founded in 1923 into an international leader in market research, helping to make its name synonymous with television ratings, died on October 3 in Winnetka (IL), where he lived most of his life. He was 92.

The son of Arthur C. Nielsen, Mr. Nielsen became president of the A. C. Nielsen Company in 1957 and its chairman in 1975. He presided over the company’s growth from a modest operation, generating less than $4 million a year in revenue, to one with revenue of more than $680 million. He worked for the company his entire adult life, joining in 1945 after serving four years in World War II as a major in the Corps of Engineers. One part of his wartime experience gave him insight into the potential importance of computers. He was assigned to construct a building to house a machine that would create elaborate tables to calculate the metrics for firing big artillery guns accurately. Nielsen recognized the potential to use such calculations in the family business, which at that point had gained most of its profit from an index that measured and tracked sales of items in food and drug stores.

The company, one of the first ever to offer market research, also began to measure radio stations’ audience size in 1936. But even after expanding to a national service in 1942, the radio arm of the business was not profitable. In 1948, at Nielsen’s urging, the company invested $150,000 in building the first general-purpose computer, the Univac. His father remained the entrepreneur of the company and led the way to creation of the first television audience measurement system in 1950. The younger Nielsen, who was known more for institutionalizing his father’s innovations, moved the company into new areas, like the creation of a clearinghouse for coupons, a service that had become a business generating more than $90 million in sales by the time the younger Nielsen retired.

He also led the company into tracking subscription data for magazines and even tracking oil and gas wells in the United States and Canada. And as chairman he presided over the development of scanning technology in its early days, allowing the company to collect information on consumer purchases of all kinds. The most visible expansion of the Nielsen business took place in the media measurement division. Nielsen fought to retain its place -- critics have long labeled it a monopoly -- over the measurement of television ratings, beating back the challenges of several potential rivals. As cable television began vastly expanding the number of networks needing national measurement, Nielsen was positioned to provide the numbers each of those channels needed to sell time to advertisers.