Portable people meters finding greater number of football fans.

For family members feeling disenfranchised by dad's obsession with pro football, the news is only getting worse.

Two weeks into the 2006 NFL season, there are more games on than ever before and they are more popular than ever before. ESPN, which inherited the "Monday Night Football" franchise from its Walt Disney Co. sibling ABC, debuted with record ratings. CBS and Fox are broadcasting their usual number of games and this year, the NFL Network is adding eight more. The network, whose production facilities are in El Segundo, will broadcast not only via cable but also on the home teams' regular broadcast channel.

"The NFL is the largest entertainment property in our culture; it produces almost 60 Nielsen ratings points per week," said sports consultant Neal Pilson. A new study from Arbitron Inc. suggests that the number of viewers who strap on their TV-watching chinstraps every Sunday--and Monday night and often on Thursdays--may be greater than thought until now.

To test its new Portable People Meter audience measurement system, Arbitron focused on viewers in the Houston TV market. Why Houston, which ranks as only the 10th largest media market in the nation, compared to Los Angeles at No. 2? Houston has an NFL team and Los Angeles doesn't.

For four games measured by PPMs in Houston, out-of-home viewers accounted for 31.1 percent, 27.1 percent, 24.9 percent and 18.3 percent of the total audience in the 25 to 54 age demographic. The study found similar results for the male 18 to 49 category, a core audience for sports advertisers. Those numbers are a whopping increase from the 13 percent average figure reported using previous measurement systems.

The PPM studies "show that almost one third of the audience for NFL football in key demographic groups have gone largely uncounted to date," Arbitron stated. For advertisers, the study could lead to higher spot prices to reflect inclusion of the formerly unmeasured viewers.