Paramount And Nielsen Hit Contract Impasse As CBS News Gets Set To Host Vice Presidential Debate

Paramount Global and Nielsen have hit a contract impasse as CBS News gets set to host the vice presidential debate Tuesday night.

As of 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday, no contract was in place between the companies, with Paramount referring advertisers to numbers supplied by VideoAmp, one of several Nielsen challengers in the marketplace.

The roots of the dispute will be familiar to anyone who has had any proximity to the TV business in recent decades. In essence, Paramount believes Nielsen is charging too much for its ratings services, which have come under fire in recent years as the media environment has grown more complex. Nielsen itself has admitted to undercounting viewership in the past but has affirmed that its methods are suitable to the current blended era of streaming and linear viewing.

Other broadcast and cable networks are simulcasting the VP debate, and other media companies remain in business with Nielsen, meaning that a total viewership number will likely circulate this week. But the arrival of a marquee piece of programming, as CBS continues to roll out its fall season and air weekly NFL and college football games of consequence will keep the dispute in play in media circles however long it lasts. CBS Corp., when it was a separate entity prior to merging with Viacom to form Paramount Global, dropped Nielsen in 2019 for more than a week.

A Paramount spokesperson said in a statement provided to Deadline that the media company has sent Nielsen “a series of good-faith proposals” for a contract renewal. Nielsen has rejected them and instead has “severed our longstanding measurement partnership with its unacceptable demands,” including price increases, the statement said. “Nielsen remains locked in an old model that doesn’t reflect today’s realities. Paramount has spent the last few years preparing for a multi-currency future and creating the operational infrastructure to move beyond Nielsen. We are confident in the quality of our alternative currency offering for clients as we continue efforts to reach a new Nielsen deal with reasonable economic terms.”

Nielsen responded, succinctly, with its own statement: “We look forward to working with Paramount on a new agreement.”

As for the debate, since other networks besides CBS are airing it, that will offer some pulse on viewership. The Nielsen numbers for CBS and other Paramount networks will also be available to other clients of the firm, making it likely that they will surface. Paramount could also opt to promote a pure VideoAmp figure, given that its currency is what advertisers will be transacting on, at least in the interim.

What makes the current dispute a little different than the decades-long, Hatfield-McCoy battles between programmers and Nielsen is the arrival of a set of challengers in the marketplace. Many programmers have signed with VideoAmp or other emerging measurement players like iSpot, though in most cases those deals are non-exclusive, leaving Nielsen still in the mix.

The longtime measurement leader, founded in 1923, gets knocked for being a vestige of the legacy media past. People associate Nielsen with paper diaries and small panels. The company has taken pains to demonstrate to its clients, which still include all major media companies despite their many complaints over the years, that it has advanced its methods.