Cumulus Wins Injunction in Nielsen Case
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Jeannette A. Vargas granted Cumulus Media a preliminary injunction against Nielsen that limits the price Nielsen can charge for national radio ratings while the case is in the court system. Cumulus Media is suing Nielsen alleging
that the company is illegally leveraging its dominance over national and local radio audience data to stifle rivals and charge inflated prices. At the heart of the complaint is the charge that Nielsen is providing access to the national broadcast radio ratings only if the client spends a lot of extra money on the separate local ratings. Cumulus argues that Nielsen’s policy forces them to buy ratings in U.S. markets where it doesn’t operate stations in order to have the complete national ratings data. Vargas’ injunction orders Nielsen to cease conditioning national ratings access on local subscriptions during ongoing contract negotiations. It also bars Nielsen from charging a commercially unreasonable rate for its nationwide ratings when sold as a standalone product while the case proceeds.
compete effective in the Philadelphia market for six months after the official separation. This comes after Gargano announced his role as a content provider for AllCity Network’s new Philadelphia sports content platform PHLY and Beasley charged that Gargano was violating his deal with WPEN. According to the terms of the preliminary injunction, Gargano can’t do any work for AllCity that appears on PHLY; he may do a national podcast and radio show with Brian Baldinger but PHLY can’t promote it; he can’t divulge confidential information about Beasley practices and can’t solicit Beasley clients until 18 months after the date of the injunction.