Cumulus Media is urging a federal judge to accelerate the discovery process in its antitrust lawsuit against Nielsen, warning that delayed access to critical evidence could inflict lasting damage to its Westwood One national radio network by year's end, crippling ad revenue and competitive viability.
The push for fast-track discovery emerged as a key escalation in last week's complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where Cumulus accuses Nielsen of monopolistic practices under the Sherman Antitrust Act and state laws. At its core, the suit targets Nielsen's "Tying Policy," announced in September 2024, which bars access to comprehensive national radio ratings data unless broadcasters buy Nielsen's local ratings in every market where they operate stations—even if those local data are unwanted or sourced from rivals like Eastlan Ratings.
This forces Cumulus, which owns nearly 400 stations across 80+ markets, into overpaying for superfluous products or accepting "Swiss cheese" national datasets riddled with gaps, like excluding Memphis where it already uses Eastlan. Cumulus labels this "textbook abuse of monopoly power," claiming it has already spiked Westwood One's costs by 36% since 2022 while degrading service quality amid over 50 reported outages in 2025.
A pivotal July 2025 call with Nielsen Audio's Rich Tunkel underscored the stakes: he admitted incomplete national data would render Westwood One's product "not real or useful," effectively holding the network hostage.
Without swift discovery—including Nielsen's internal documents on pricing, policy rationale, and rival suppression—Cumulus argues it faces "irreparable harm" as contract renewals loom by December 31, 2025, potentially slashing ad deals, eroding advertiser trust, and inviting market share erosion in an industry already battered by digital shifts.
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