What happens next in the Cumulus/Nielsen legal faceoff?
The federal judge handling Cumulus Media’s lawsuit about Nielsen’s national ratings policy has requested more info from both sides.
This follows a recent ruling by an appeals court that went against Nielsen. That ruling upheld the judge’s injunction barring Nielsen from requiring broadcasters to purchase local ratings in order to gain access to its national ratings data.
Nielsen now claims that the previous injunction is moot. The judge wants to hear from Cumulus about that. She also ordered the companies to supply supplemental briefings by Friday, seeking to determine if district court still maintains jurisdiction to enforce the injunction.
Cumulus last month told Vargas that Nielsen’s refusal to provide national data on commercially reasonable terms ran afoul of her injunction. Nielsen says it then extended an offer for the national data to Cumulus within the 48 hours demanded by the broadcaster.
Nielsen wrote that having offered Cumulus Media its Nationwide rating data, it “therefore makes a court injunction forcing it to do so moot.”
It doesn’t say how much it would charge Cumulus for the data. Nielsen said it’s at a “commercially reasonable rate.”
So Nielsen argues that Cumulus lacks a basis to enforce the injunction. In fact, it says Cumulus continues to have access to the most current Nationwide data under terms of the previous contract until Sept. 10, 2026.
Cumulus wants to receive the data by July 27 but Nielsen called that deadline “artificial and arbitrary” and no real emergency.
“What Cumulus casts as an emergency is a continuation of its negotiating tactic since the start of this case: spinning up doomsday scenarios to convince this court to act urgently, even when it will continue to have access to the most current Nationwide data for another six weeks,” Nielsen told the judge.
The company told the court it has been negotiating with Cumulus in good faith.
It continued: “Cumulus’ motion (for the judge to enforce the injunction) was thus an unnecessary gambit to install this court as referee over every aspect of what should be a commercial negotiation – down to who must make an offer and by what date. Now that Nielsen has made an offer, Cumulus’s motion is both unnecessary and moot.”
The antitrust fight between the companies over ratings has been ongoing since October 2025, when Cumulus sued Nielsen.
A core issue is Nielsen’s 2024 Network Policy requiring broadcasters wanting national data, including Cumulus’ Westwood One network, also to purchase local ratings.
