Nielsen's Trials Continue

Audience measurement continues to bring its share of legal problems for Nielsen worldwide. Today, the court in the Philippines 'bribery' case ordered a halt in TV audience fieldwork; while in Spain, a newspaper has filed a claim against the ratings giant for losing it '$1.4m' in ad revenue.

Spanish media company Prisa is suing Nielsen in a New York court for over-estimating unique visitor numbers for the web site of its Spanish daily newspaper El Pais in February, resulting in a later downgrading of the audience estimate for August by almost 20%. The over-estimate reportedly came from erroneous inclusion of elpais.com's RSS page, a subscription-based site not generally included in audience counts.

Meanwhile in the Pacific, Judge Charito Gonzales of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court issued a TRO based on a civil case filed by ABS-CBN Broadcasting Network Corp., ordering AGB Nielsen Media Research Philippines to 'cease and desist from pursuing its nationwide [television audience measurement] data gathering activities from corrupted home panels and delivering, releasing or making known the resulting TAM data to its clients or the general public within 20 days from the issuance of this order.'

Gonzales said AGB Nielsen MD Maya Reforma 'did not controvert plaintiff's allegation that there was infiltration of panel homes which could have compromised the integrity of the TAM data', but had taken no action; and that Reforma had 'failed to dispute that the delivery of tainted or corrupted TAM data would cause plaintiff (ABS-CBN) grave and irreparable injury.'

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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