TV Networks Demand Nielsen Submit to Audit in Battle Over Coronavirus Audience Counts

Mario Lopez and the cast of “Saved by the Bell” have not forgotten about Dustin Diamond.

Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan‘s divorce is still not final and the former couple is reportedly battling over money right now.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorNielsen and the networks it serves have long been at odds, like a student might be with a particularly tough college professor who always offers a B- but never an A.

coronavirus policies.In a statement, NTIA Scotland said: “Scottish Government support has been wholly inadequate to compensate for operating losses and a majority of businesses have now incurred unsustainable debt as a result.”Noting that 39,000 jobs are at risk, it argued that the costs of rent, staff furlough, insurance and other expenses are now far exceeding the income gained from revenue and government grants.They said the average small business in the sector has now exceeded £150,000 in

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorOpen AP, the media consortium that hopes to broaden the practice known as “audience buying,” will unveil a new “identifier” aimed at facilitating the placement of commercials across linear TV and digital video — and a significant chunk of traditional TV and advertising companies are lining up to support the venture.AMC Networks, A+E Networks, Crown Media, Discovery, Disney, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, Univision, ViacomCBS, WarnerMedia and The Weather Channel

Momma’s not backing down!

The multi-billionaires are fighting! Elon Musk couldn’t resist poking fun at Jeff Bezos, after Elon’s SpaceX company won out over Jeff’s Blue Origin company in a bidding war over a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to build a moon lander for the Artemis moon program, which will allow 18 astronauts to make missions to the moon.

Roy Trakin Cannabis and country music icon Willie Nelson will be one of the keynote speakers at the virtual marijuana convention Luck Summit: Planting the Seed, taking place on April 26-29 in Nelson’s hometown of Luck, TX.“I think that people are realizing more and more that cannabis is a positive thing,” said Nelson.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorNBCUniversal said it hired a senior executive from Nielsen to oversee new efforts to help advertisers measure their commercials’ reach and effectiveness amid an outbreak of new tensions between the TV networks and the large measurement company.Kelly Abcarian was named executive vice president of measurement and impact at NBCU’s ad-sales unit, charged with helping advertisers find ways to gauge how many consumers their marketing efforts reach across NBCU’s

Hong Kong director Derek Tsang's harrowing youth drama Better Days is the rare Oscar best international film nominee that was both critically acclaimed and a massive commercial hit. Released in mainland China in October 2019, the film grossed $223 million, which is more than 40 times the total earnings of the other four international feature nominees combined.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticYou’re either already on the “Demon Slayer” train or you’re not, and the hit Japanese feature — arriving stateside having surpassed “Spirited Away” as the highest-grossing anime movie of all time — is hardly the vehicle for the popular franchise to pick up new passengers. That doesn’t mean the action-packed toon won’t appeal to those curious to check out the sensation that has earned more than $415 million internationally.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorNielsen has flatly rejected demands from major networks for an outside audit of its TV ratings for the past year amid complaints that Nielsen has undercounted viewers during the pandemic lockdown period.In what would appear to be a rebuke to demands that the TV-ratings giant submit its recent audience measurement to an independent review by consultant Ernst & Young, Nielsen said Friday that it already is examined regularly by the Media Rating Council.

A consortium of TV networks is demanding an independent audit of Nielsen ratings — the latest volley in a dispute between broadcasters and the company that measures their audiences. The Video Advertising Bureau, an industry group that acts as a bridge between networks and advertisers, claims Nielsen has let the size and quality of its national TV panel degrade since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThe media industry’s go-to authority for measuring audiences acknowledged on Friday that the recent coronavirus pandemic bent its yardstick, but maintains nothing is broken.Nielsen, under fire from the TV networks that depend on it to count the audiences for which advertisers pay, says pandemic conditions resulted in a smaller panel of consumers it relies on to monitor TV viewing, but believes the trends it chronicles during 2020 remain viable.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThe nation’s TV networks claim the primary arbiter of who watches their programs allowed its business to deteriorate during the coronavirus pandemic and has only devised “a four-ounce solution to a ten-pound problem” of trying to count TV viewers during an unprecedented era in history.Speaking Thursday, Sean Cunningham, the CEO of the VAB, a trade organization that represents the broadcast and cable networks to Madison Avenue, alleged that measurement giant