NIELSEN CAN MEASURE ONLINE WATCHERS

YORK» The Nielsen NEW company, which has long measured viewership of television programs, now says it has a way to collect and widely spread details about how many people watch programming produced by streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.

Nielsen announced its new service on Wednesday and said that eight television networks and studios, including ABC and NBC, have subscribed to it.

Nielsen will be able to measure viewership of streamed programs through an audio signature that does not require any action by the programmers to activate it, said Brian Fuhrer, Nielsen’s senior vice president of product leadership.