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Big news from folks at Nielson: the be-all-end-all of television ratings intends to include Internet TV viewing, what it calls Extended Screens, in its national ratings.

At Nielsen, OnDemand Online and TV Everywhere are examples of what we refer to as the “Extended Screen” — initiatives that treat the computer as another screen in the home used to watch television. In fact, we’re already working to capture television viewing that takes place online and to add that viewing back in to the ratings. That includes in our National C3 ratings.

Tough, business to be sure. According to Nielson, the company intends to achieve this objective by implementing an “Internet software meter:

We’ve currently installed this Internet software meter among 375 homes in our National People Meter panel, allowing us to evaluate the measurement of Internet usage alongside TV usage.

This could represent a huge change in how television advertising is bought and sold, so it bears watching. One wonders if web-only television will also be rated – we’ll have to get the word from TubeFilter on that one.