A federal judge is forcing Nielsen to hand over three years of pricing data as part of a scramble ahead of today’s hearing that could determine whether Cumulus Media keeps access to Nielsen’s national radio ratings past its September contract deadline.
>Nielsen has told the court that extending Cumulus’s access to the nationwide product would no longer be “commercially practicable,” a claim Judge Jeannette Vargas is now requiring Nielsen to justify.
Both sides are set to meet with Vargas this afternoon over Cumulus’s motion to enforce the injunction it already won against Nielsen. In a letter to the court, Nielsen’s counsel laid out the company’s plan: a verified pricing report for 2026 that will not be made publicly available, plus a declaration from Nielsen Audio Managing Director Rich Tunkel and a memo from Nielsen’s economist, Dr. Mark Zmijewski.
Vargas didn’t let Nielsen limit those numbers to 2026 alone. In a Sunday order, the judge told the company to also hand over pricing data from 2024 and 2025.
The dispute traces back to October, when Cumulus sued Nielsen over a policy it said forced radio companies to buy local ratings data just to get access to national ratings data. Vargas sided with Cumulus in December, blocking that policy with a preliminary injunction. Nielsen won a temporary pause from an appeals court in February, lost that appeal in July, and the injunction was formally back in force by late August.
