International Courant
With simply hours to go earlier than its CBS tv community televises what is for certain to be a closely watched debate between two candidates for Vice President of america, Paramount International mentioned late Monday evening that its contract with Nielsen for viewers measurement has expired — a part of a broader dispute between the corporate and the information big.
“Nielsen has severed our long-standing measurement partnership with its unacceptable calls for, together with substantial value will increase which are inconsistent with the realities of a altering business,” Paramount mentioned in an announcement. “We now have spent the previous couple of years making ready for a multi-currency future and creating the operational infrastructure to maneuver past Nielsen. We’re assured within the high quality of our various forex providing for purchasers as we proceed efforts to achieve a brand new Nielsen settlement with cheap financial phrases.”
Nielsen was not in a position to supply speedy remark.
Paramount had signaled to advertisers and their representatives final week that the corporate could be with out Nielsen companies. Paramount intends to depend on VideoAmp, one among a rising variety of rivals to Nielsen, to assist advertisers monitor the quantity of people that watch programming on Paramount’s portfolio of media property.
At problem is a long-running criticism from TV networks that Nielsen is not measuring the various completely different audiences for his or her programming in addition to it ought to. As smartphones, cell tablets and broadband-connected TV’s acquire extra shopper acceptance, audiences are more and more in a position to stream their TV favorites in on-demand style, making the duty of counting them exponentially tougher. TV networks have lengthy based mostly their promoting charges on Nielsen’s measure of linear TV audiences, which have slipped as shoppers embraced Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and different streaming and on-demand choices.
On the identical time, Paramount is beneath excessive strain to chop prices. The corporate is about to be acquired by Skydance Media, and its present administration staff has already begun working to trim $500 million from its working construction. Skydance Media has articulated a plan beneath which it will cut back prices by one other $1.5 billion.
Executives at Paramount have a look at the a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands the corporate spends on Nielsen measurement every year, in keeping with one of many folks aware of the state of affairs, and really feel that paying a better payment appears ill-advised and never within the firm’s finest curiosity. They really feel that Nielsen’s charges would in some circumstances exceed the overall advert income of the community being measured — an indication of how a number of the firm’s cable networks have deteriorated within the streaming period.
Paramount might discover itself hard-pressed to go with out Nielsen for lengthy. The corporate’s measurements proceed to type the bedrock of the economics of the media business. Advertisers use Nielsen counts to determine how a lot they need to pay for commercials. The corporate expects to proceed its negotiations with Nielsen and hopes to achieve an settlement.
Nielsen and elements of Paramount have come to loggerheads previously. In 2019, CBS dropped Nielsen over an identical dispute tied to pricing. CBS was with out Nielsen measures for about 11 days.
Paramount, Nielsen With out TV Scores Contract in Dispute Over Prices
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