Weather Channel Owner Sues Nielsen Ratings Over Fees

The owner of the Weather Channel accused Nielsen Co. in a lawsuit of using a monopoly over TV ratings to force it to pay more than 10 times what it was paying before it bought the popular news site in 2018.

Nielsen jacked up Byron Allen's CF Entertainment Inc.’s monthly bill from $41,000 to $475,000 after it bought the channel, according to the complaint filed Friday in Chicago federal court.

The California-based media company says this violated its 2017 contract with Nielsen and is “yet another attempt by Nielsen to abuse its monopolistic power over television ratings to extort a massive windfall from a smaller market participant.”

The Weather Channel's owner says Nielsen is engaging in "predatory pricing" because of its monopoly on ratings services.

"Nielsen’s stranglehold on viewership data and the fact that it supplies the only currency accepted by advertisers gives it lopsided leverage when entering into ratings agreements with broadcasters such as CF Entertainment," writes attorney Sean Berkowitz in the complaint, which is posted in full below. "Nielsen knows that its ratings information is essential to a network’s ability to recover revenue from advertisers, because advertisers only pay based Nielsen’s upon proof of performance. If a network cannot provide proof of performance in the form of Nielsen ratings data, the network cannot earn and receive any revenue for its advertisements."

According to the complaint, CF in 2017 amended its longstanding deal with Nielsen and agreed to pay $41,667 per month in exchange for ratings services for any cable networks it owned or acquired. The amendment was designed to avoid piecemeal renegotiations each time the company acquired a new network, and specifies that any newly acquired channel could receive Nielsen services for that rate for up to four years.

Then, in 2018, CF acquired The Weather Channel and it claims Nielsen refused to honor that fee structure.

"Instead, without any basis in the operative contract, Nielsen demanded that CF Entertainment pay a monthly fee that was more than ten times the fee set forth in the 2017 amendment — a sum that would result in over $30 million in illicit gain for Nielsen, and far greater, catastrophic economic damage to CF Entertainment’s business," writes attorney Berkowitz.

CF argues the move amounts to extortion because it and companies like it "cannot survive without Nielsen’s ratings services, as television advertising is sold based on viewership as measured by Nielsen."

In response to a request for comment, a Nielsen spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter, "We do not comment on pending litigation."