The legal battle between Nielsen and Cumulus Media has escalated, with the ratings giant filing a countersuit that accuses Cumulus of handing over ratings data to one of its main competitors.
In a filing Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Nielsen alleged that Cumulus engaged in an “illicit pressure campaign” designed to extract favorable contract terms.
The countersuit claims that while Cumulus was “stringing Nielsen along” during renewal negotiations for this year, it was secretly acting in bad faith by handing over what it calls “Nielsen’s crown jewels” — its radio ratings data — to Eastlan Ratings.
The filing comes as a Nielsen spokesperson told Radio World that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has granted a request to stay the preliminary injunction Cumulus had recently won, as our Randy Stine previously covered.
That injunction would have prevented Nielsen from canceling services or enforcing certain pricing policies while the lawsuit proceeded.
Email to Eastlan
The countersuit specifically names Pierre Bouvard, chief insights officer for Cumulus and Westwood One. Nielsen alleges that Bouvard sent an email to Eastlan CEO Michael Gould attaching Nielsen’s proprietary ratings data.
Gould’s testimony on Dec. 11 “attested to this fact,” Nielsen said in the filing.
According to Nielsen, this data allowed Eastlan to “benchmark” against Nielsen’s metrics and “optimize” its own products without incurring the costs of independent research.
Nielsen claimed this was an attempt to manufacture a competitor to force the ratings company to lower its prices. “Without Cumulus sharing this information with Eastlan, Eastlan would not have had access to this Nielsen Information,” the filing states.
Procompetitive
In its answer to the original antitrust complaint, Nielsen denied it is a monopolist and defended its network policy and subscriber first policy.
Nielsen argued those policies are “procompetitive” because they protect intellectual property and ensure the company is fairly compensated.
The company said that the alleged data leak to Eastlan proves exactly why such strict policies are necessary to prevent the “unauthorized use” of its data.
Nielsen is seeking monetary damages, a declaratory judgment that Cumulus breached the 2023 services agreement and a permanent injunction to stop further data sharing.
An initial pre-trial conference, according to Radio Ink, is scheduled for March 17.
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