Designated Market Areas (DMA’s) are used by Nielsen Media Research to identify TV stations whose broadcast signals reach a specific area and attract the most viewers. A DMA consists of all counties whose largest viewing share is given to stations of that same market area. Non-overlapping DMA’s cover the entire continental United States, Hawaii and parts of Alaska. There are currently 210 Designated Market Areas throughout the U.S.

Under the new government regulations covering satellite services, satellite service providers are using our DMA designations to help them determine which local stations are most appropriate to be included in the local broadcast service. Nielsen Media Research is not actually involved in those decisions, it is just that our information is being used.

Nielsen Media Research is in the business of measuring the audience for broadcast and cable television. In addition, we offer services to measure website activity and we produce a number of reports on media and home technologies.

The Nielsen Media Research local market definition, also known as a Designated Market Area (DMA), to identify markets where the majority of television viewing activity is to specific broadcast television stations. Because we look at every county to see what over-the-air stations receive the majority of viewing, we assign counties into a DMA based on majority viewing. We base our DMA reviews on research that we gather at least four times a year from our diary samples in all markets. They are asked to keep track of television viewing for one week, recording in a diary that we provide all viewing by all household members. This is done for all 210 television markets in the United States in November, February, May and July and is generally referred to as the "sweeps." In an average year more than 1.6 million households participate in diary surveys.

If you want access to another market's television stations, you can ask your satellite provider to request a waiver from the local television stations directly. Local television stations are no longer required to grant waivers to individual subscribers, as they had in the past, so now the satellite providers need to request this from the stations for you.

Please remember that none of our research tells a local station what news they should cover, or where their news bureaus should be. That is strictly up to the television stations. If you are unsatisfied with the local news service you are receiving by your satellite provider, you may want to contact the television stations directly and let them know about your issues. If you need to get in touch with a local station, a directory to the stations in the U.S. is located at http://tv.zap2it.com.

You can also check out the FCC's Web site at http://www.fcc.gov to read about the issues.