A federal appeals court has upheld an injunction won by Cumulus Media against Nielsen, agreeing with a lower court that the ratings giant likely violated antitrust law by leveraging an alleged monopoly over national radio data to pressure broadcasters into buying local data they didn’t want.
The ruling, issued on July 13, reinstates a December 30 preliminary injunction from the Southern District of New York.
The injunction bars Nielsen from enforcing the Network Policy and from charging a “commercially unreasonable rate” for standalone Nationwide access. A safe harbor provision states that any rate at or below the highest 2026 rate Nielsen charges any broadcaster is presumptively reasonable.
Cumulus sued Nielsen in October, alleging its 2024 Network Policy unlawfully tied Nationwide, the only national ratings report of its kind, to local ratings data in every market where a broadcaster operates. Nielsen controls 100% of the national ratings market; Eastlan is its only local competitor. Cumulus, which operates 395 stations and distributes content to more than 9,500 affiliated stations through Westwood One, had sought to drop some of the 76 local markets it previously bought through Nielsen in favor of Eastlan.
After Cumulus threatened suit, Nielsen offered a standalone Nationwide price for Westwood One for the first time, one the district court found ran at least 150% higher than what any other network paid, and ten times what Cumulus was already paying under its existing contract. Pairing that price with Eastlan’s local data would have reportedly cost Cumulus $1.2 million more than Nielsen’s earlier, expressly tied offer. The court called that no real choice at all, and ruled the pricing functioned as a constructive tie.
The Second Circuit agreed Nielsen “made no effort to quantify these costs or correlate them with its price for standalone Nationwide.” The panel also credited evidence that the policy created a barrier to entry for Eastlan, pointing to a New Orleans broadcaster exempt from the policy whose annual revenue fell short of what Eastlan’s local data would have cost, an example of markets where Nielsen’s smaller rival struggles to gain scale.
Judges affirmed the district court’s finding of irreparable harm tied to Cumulus’s likely loss of customers, goodwill, and market share, though they rejected two broader rationales the lower court had relied on: that generalized consumer harm and reduced competition alone were independently sufficient grounds for injunctive relief in a private antitrust suit.
The ruling also cleared up a procedural wrinkle created by Cumulus’s Chapter 11 filing on March 10. Both parties agreed, and the panel confirmed, that the bankruptcy’s automatic stay doesn’t reach claims Cumulus brought against Nielsen, only Nielsen’s separate counterclaims, which remain stayed in district court.
The case now returns to the district court for further proceedings, with the injunction still in effect.
