Byron Allen sues Nielsen for ratings fraud

Media mogul Byron Allen claimed in a lawsuit that TV ratings company Nielsen Holdings Plc is providing “unreliable” counts of viewers, and he is seeking billions of dollars in damages.

Companies controlled by Allen, who has waged a long campaign to get major corporations to spend more on Black-owned programming, accused Nielsen of fraud and said the ratings service used to determine the price of running advertisements on TV is “outdated, unreliable and broken,” according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Chicago.

Nielsen misrepresented its ability to produce accurate ratings for Allen’s networks, even though the networks had limited distribution at the time, the lawsuit alleged. Allen Media Group, which he founded, owns Entertainment Studios Inc., The Weather Channel and dozens of network-affiliated stations. A similar suit was filed against Nielsen in 2020 over fees charged to the Weather Channel.

According to Allen’s lawsuit, Nielsen under-counted out-of-home viewers over a 16-month period that began in 2020, costing the industry more than $700 million in lost ad revenue. During NBC’s broadcast of the Super Bowl last month, Nielsen acknowledged failing to capture as many as 41 million viewers, the suit claimed.