Nielsen Anti-Trust Case Dismissed

In the US, the anti-trust lawsuit raised by TV ratings company erinMedia against Nielsen Media Research (NMR) has been dismissed by the court, with terms of the agreement remaining undisclosed and both parties agreeing to pay their own court costs.

erinMedia brought the suit in 2005, when the firm's Chair, Frank Maggio challenged NMR's 'illegal' rating monopoly, claiming that its multi-year, staggered contracts with 'some or all' of the four largest broadcast companies - ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC - made it impossible for any competitor to establish a rival TV audience measurement tool.

Maggio claimed that his firm's ability to measure 25 million households was superior to NMR's sample of less than 9,000 homes (www.mrweb.com/drno/news5035.htm ), and complained that Nielsen's monopoly had prevented erinMedia's technology from being adopted by the TV industry.

Last February, Maggio alleged that his efforts to raise $25m funding for this technology had been 'chilled' by Nielsen's release of its DigitalPlus set top box ratings division, and maintained that its timing was 'not coincidental' (www.mrweb.com/drno/news6472.htm ).

This lack of investment resulted in the firm being forced to lay off a majority of its employees and divert its focus to the licensing of its census-based Inverse Demographic Matrix (IDM) system to firms interested in analyzing digital set top box data using second by second overnight ratings.

At the time, Nielsen called the legal action 'frivolous' and 'completely unfounded', adding that it felt confident that the lawsuit would fail.

A longer-term threat to Nielsen in the US TV marketplace could come from TNS, which recently grouped several of its North American operating units into a new division, TNS media, to strengthen its ability to provide global measurement and analysis of consumer behavior across all media and digital platforms (www.mrweb.com/drno/news8076.htm ).

Web sites: www.erinMedia.net , www.nielsenmedia.com and www.tnsglobal.com .

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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