InsideRadio reports he counterclaim, filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland, shoots holes in the Memphis PPM ratings service methodology, claiming its sample size and demographic representation were insufficient and adversely impacted minority broadcasters such as Flinn. The PPM, which remains unaccredited by the Media Rating Council in Memphis, produced results that were “unreliable, false and misleading,” Flinn claims, arguing that Nielsen had an obligation to “disclose such facts” before signing Flinn to a ratings contract.
The claim comes in response to a suit filed by Nielsen which alleged Flinn breached its contract by failing to pay $136,872.88 for PPM ratings and other services for its five-station Memphis cluster during an eight-month period in 2015. Flinn stations in Memphis are: Top40 WHBG 1075. FM, HipHop KXHT 107.1 FM, Sports WHBQ 560 AM / 87.7 T-FM. Throwback HipHop WIVG 96.1 FM, WMPS 1210 AM, Hispanic WGSF 1030 AM
Flinn’s suit also drags Nielsen into a legal quagmire over how it responded to the impact that Voltair had on its ratings. The suit describes how the ratings of one of Flinn’s competitors “began to increase dramatically for no apparent reason” early last year, which Flinn attributed to the competitor’s use of Voltair.
That resulted in ratings that were “misleading and fraudulent” and cost Flinn some reduced ad revenue. Flinn says when it contacted Nielsen about the matter, the measurement giant advised the broadcaster not to buy a Voltair, and said it was working on a solution. Nielsen failed to take action against broadcasters in Memphis that used Voltair, the countersuit says, claiming that Nielsen’s enhanced CBET encoders were “a tacit admission that the version of PPM that had been in use for years did not fully measure listening and that Voltair provided an unfair benefit to the radio stations that used it.”
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