LAST week, ad agencies across town received a 900word cry for help in the form of an emailed "Open Letter To [audience measurement firm] AGB Nielsen and the Advertising Industry" from Channel 6's chairman. Pat Donnelly's missive describes Nielsen's audience measurement as "JUNK" and wrong for the market. The letter fumes that under Nielsen's measurement the audience for Channel 6 has decreased, despite being available in double the number of homes once the channel was accepted onto the Sky platform.

Donnelly . . . to put it politely . . . begs to differ, wondering how, with 2m spent in above-the-line advertising and an awardwinning lineup of US programmes, it was possible for its audience to decline. He concludes dark forces are at work: "There has been an extraordinary conspiracy of silence . . . with regard to the dependability of the Nielsen research."

Publius has sympathy for the odd rant . . . but this rant seems odd even by our standards. Is Channel 6 angry that the Nielsen system sees an audience that small as a rounding error?

Or is the operation's burn rate of cash starting to look like a dotcom? We called Donnelly at his South Carolina residence to find out.

Publius can confirm that Donnelly is indeed as angry as his email sounds, railing against what he says is Nielsen's 300% margin of error when measuring an audience as small as those of digital channels. When asked whether Channel 6 had recently been forced to ask its shareholders for more cash to continue operations, Donnelly said: "Audience delivers revenue. Nielsen isn't delivering our audience . . . Are we pissed off with our revenue? Yes. It doesn't take a genius to work it out." He insisted there was no danger of an imminent cessation of trading for the channel.

At the time of going to print Nielsen had not returned calls seeking comment.

PUBLICIS QMP CIRCLING FOR DAA LANDING

Publicis QMP is in discussions to finalise a contract for advertising with the Dublin Airport Authority. It's a piece of business that agency boss Tom Doherty must know reasonably well, as the airport business was with Owens DDB when Doherty was at that firm. It seems unlikely that the business simply followed Doherty, however . . . DAA communications director Vincent Wall started work in 2003, after the agency process was completed. So we can say that Publicis QMP became the favoured bidder on the merits. That and being willing to pay a 400 fee to an airport website to pitch.

We look forward to seeing whether Doherty's Publicis can counter the earned media bitterness and spite emerging from Ryanair's headquarters.

TWINKLE, TWINKLE

Kudos to Bronagh O'Hanlon and Jackie Leonard of Brown Bag for donating a spot for the Little Star Fund (www. littestarfund. ie), an umbrella group pitching for one percent of your SSIA money to help support various children's charities.

Setanta, Sky, Channel 6, E4 and Living TV have donated airtime for the spot next week. Now if only RTE and TV3 would donate airtime.