{"id":312001,"date":"2025-10-17T23:58:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T23:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/312001\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T23:58:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T23:58:10","slug":"cumulus-sues-nielsen-over-alleged-radio-ratings-antitrust-violations-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/312001\/","title":{"rendered":"Cumulus Sues Nielsen Over Alleged Radio Ratings Antitrust Violations. | Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cumulus Media has taken legal action against Nielsen, alleging the company engaged in anticompetitive practices that inflated the cost of radio ratings data and limited market access for competitors, Reuters<\/a> reports. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Thursday (Oct. 16), the suit claims Nielsen conditioned access to national broadcast radio analytics on the purchase of separate local ratings, a move Cumulus says violates federal and state antitrust laws.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, brought by Hogan Lovells on behalf of Cumulus Media New Holdings, specifically cites a 36% increase in Westwood One\u2019s national ratings data in 2022, along with consistent subsequent price hikes tied to Nielsen\u2019s new \u201ctying policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the suit, Cumulus says that in September 2024, Nielsen \u201cannounced a new policy to illegally maintain its market power in both the National Radio Ratings Data Market and the Local Radio Ratings Data Markets (the \u201cTying Policy\u201d). Specifically, Nielsen announced that if a national network owns, manages, operates, or has a sales or operating agreement or similar business relationship with local radio stations (a \u201cshared-ownership local radio station\u201d), Nielsen would exclude from the national radio ratings data purchased by the national network any geographies where the shared-ownership local radio stations do not purchase Nielsen\u2019s local radio ratings data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cumulus also cites a phone call in July with Rich Tunkel, Managing Director for Nielsen Audio, who said \u201ca national radio ratings data product without these geographies would be \u2018Swiss cheese,\u2019 and \u2018have holes.\u2019 Mr. Tunkel admitted that any product without comprehensive Nationwide ratings would not be the \u2018real\u2019 or a \u2018useful\u2019 product. Tunkel also agreed that Nielsen was tying Nielsen\u2019s local radio ratings data and Nationwide products together,\u201d the suit read.<\/p>\n

Cumulus owns nearly 400 stations across more than 80 U.S. markets, while Westwood One produces national programming and serves as the official network audio broadcast partner of the NFL.<\/p>\n

According to the complaint, Nielsen\u2019s policies force networks and stations to buy local ratings in markets where they aren\u2019t needed, effectively limiting access to national data. Cumulus claims this conduct has degraded product quality, blocked competitors from gaining a foothold, and harmed hundreds of millions of dollars in commerce. The company warned that continued practices could lead to inflated costs, reduced choice, and diminished innovation for advertisers and stations.<\/p>\n

In response, Nielsen said the lawsuit is \u201centirely without merit\u201d and pledged to respond accordingly. Cumulus called the legal action a challenge to \u201canticompetitive conduct that we believe is unlawful and damaging\u201d and is seeking unspecified monetary damages along with a court order to halt Nielsen\u2019s allegedly unfair practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cumulus Media has taken legal action against Nielsen, alleging the company engaged in anticompetitive practices that inflated the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":312002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,3723,975,50,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-312001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-free","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115392223960931314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}