Awful Announcing
"The changes Nielsen wants to force into NFL currency next week are greatly favoring a single NFL publisher (Amazon) with single-digit share of live sports programming, through an opaque process that essentially builds a walled garden with favorable fundamentals for Amazon in the NFL, in one of the most competitive, highly valued properties in US marketing."
"We believe that our principled, transparent and open approach to integrating first-party data requires all publishers to play by the same rules and will accelerate the industry’s move toward a streaming-first world."
"Anything that is not impartial and unbiased is unacceptable to us. I must say that we think it's extremely odd and unfortunate that different rules are suddenly applying to one platform."
"Reckless, wrongheaded, and a slap in the face to the largest Nielsen clients and NFL partners."
It turns out Fox did set that record after all.
This survey suggests a gain from the previous Nielsen numbers on reach (from 182.6 million to 200 million viewers, a nine percent bump) and average minute audience (from 113.1 million to 136 million viewers, a 20 percent rise).
Ratings discourse tends to be an exercise in separating noise from other noise.
"This is a huge testament to the role Nielsen plays. It demonstrates the importance of our ratings in the media ecosystem."
This is not good news for the embattled Nielsen service.
NBCUniversal reportedly hopes to use the data for spring upfront sales.
TV executives were already sour on Nielsen. That sentiment isn't likely to change now.
While linear ESPN saw large losses, ESPN+ added almost 7 million subscribers.
Networks clearly weren't happy at the prospect of having to renegotiate ad sales for the fall amidst the current pandemic.
Overnight sports ratings may not be available this fall if these executives are successful.
Nielsen failed to include the station's streaming simulcast numbers in a recent report, the latest snafu involving their tracking technology.
NFL Network has lost an estimated 4.4 million subscribers since August 2018, and an estimated 7.9 million since February 2017.
The latest Nielsen coverage estimates show ESPN's networks gaining a bit, but some losses for MLB Network and NFL Network.
ESPN (-290,000), NBCSN (-224,000) and FS1 (-147,000) all lost subscribers from July to August. BTN saw a big drop (-350,000). ESPNU (-632,000) saw the biggest month-to-month loss, but received a non-linear boost.
