After taking legal action against McDonald’s in 2021, Byron Allen has filed yet another lawsuit.
According to Deadline, the media mogul’s companies including Weather Group, Entertainment Studios Networks (ESN), and CF Entertainment have sued Nielsen. Allen Media Group claims that the ratings company has undercounted its viewers and was unreliable for Allen’s ESN networks, given their limited distribution.
“This lawsuit is about Nielsen’s outdated, unreliable and broken television ratings service, and the resulting harm suffered by media companies who rely on Nielsen to sell ad time,” the complaint explains, according to Deadline.
In addition to its alleged inaccuracy, ESN also claimed Nielsen failed to tell ESN the truth about its ratings services, which the company reportedly already knew.
“Nielsen did not tell Entertainment Studios the truth – that, in reality, its ratings services were not reliable for networks like those owned by Entertainment Studios,” the suit details.
Within the civil lawsuit, Byron Allen is seeking billions of dollars due to the damages caused.
Byron Allen shares a statement:
“The industry has suffered billions of dollars in losses, and we can no longer afford these damages. Nielsen needs to quickly address these issues. If not, I highly expect that Nielsen will soon face a $10 billion-plus class-action lawsuit.”
Past Nielsen Lawsuit
In April 2020, AfroTech previously reported that Allen’s company CF Entertainment filed a formal lawsuit against Nielsen for “predatory pricing” after increasing its monthly ratings fee to over $475,000 a month — breaking their original contract.
“That payment, like each one it has made to Nielsen since April 2018, was effectively a ransom that CF Entertainment had to make to keep The Weather Channel on air,” CF’s attorney Sean Berkowitz wrote in the lawsuit. “CF Entertainment will not be held hostage any longer, and it will no longer sit idly by and accede to Nielsen’s extortionist conduct.”
