Cumulus Media just sued Nielsen. In plain English (or plane English, if you’re reading this on your way to NAB), Cumulus says Nielsen is a monopoly abusing its power.
According to the complaint, Nielsen is allegedly forcing broadcasters to buy expensive local ratings data they don’t want in order to access the national ratings data they can’t live without. Without it, Cumulus’s national network, Westwood One, claims it would be flying blind, unable to prove audience reach to advertisers.
In legal terms, it’s called tying. In radio terms, it’s like being told you can’t buy a spot schedule unless you also purchase the entire station.
If you’ve ever tried to sell national radio advertising without Nielsen numbers, you know it’s like trying to sell air — everyone needs it, but no one’s buying it from you. (And yes, technically radio already sells air — but you get the point.)
“Less Is More” – Again
According to Cumulus, this isn’t just about their billing; it’s billions in lost opportunity for every operator trying to keep the lights on. The company claims Nielsen has been raising prices simply because it can, downgrading what it delivers, and blocking anyone else from even getting in the stadium.
Left unchecked, Cumulus says, the whole industry risks fewer choices, higher costs, and a ratings economy where everyone’s paying more to get less. And if that phrase sounds familiar, it should: the irony writes itself. Only this time, “Less Is More” isn’t a programming strategy; it’s the bill.
The Monopoly Mix
For decades, Nielsen has been radio’s referee, the scoreboard everyone agrees to use, whether they like the calls or not. It sells two core products:
Local Ratings — showing how stations perform in each city.
National Ratings (Nationwide) — showing how networks like Westwood One perform across the country.
Every advertiser, agency, and broadcaster depends on those numbers to price, plan, and prove their reach.
But according to Cumulus, Nielsen has crossed the line from measuring performance to monetizing dependence. The lawsuit alleges Nielsen is using its monopoly to force radio companies to buy both products together, even if they only want one. In other words, if you want to play in the national game, you have to pay for every local scoreboard too.
The “Buy One, Buy All” Rule
In 2024, Nielsen allegedly told Cumulus:
(Scene: evil corporatey voice) “If you don’t buy our local ratings everywhere you own a station, we’ll delete those cities from your national data.”
(cue) mwahahaha laugh
Translation: skip Los Angeles, and your national report suddenly pretends L.A. doesn’t exist, like Google Maps pretending California stops at Fresno, and Fresno already has enough dead ends.
On a July 2025 call with Cumulus, Rich Tunkel, Nielsen Audio’s Managing Director, reportedly admitted the result would be “Swiss cheese.” He allegedly went on to say the product would “have holes” and wouldn’t be a “real” or a “useful” ratings product.
And no one — not McDonald’s, not Home Depot — wants to buy ads based on Swiss-cheese data. There’s a reason McDonald’s skipped Swiss on the Big Mac: the holes ruin the taste. According to Cumulus, Nielsen still thinks it’s the secret sauce.
So Cumulus says it faced two bad options:
Overpay for local data it didn’t want or need
or
Lose the ability to sell national ads.
Without those subscriptions, Cumulus alleges Nielsen turned them into “Cume-You-Less.”
And the real cost isn’t just financial; it’s human. Those dollars, Cumulus suggests, could have funded marketing, programmers, talent, and creatives who keep radio alive. But the only thing station owners are getting in their Happy Meals, they say, is another bill.
The Price Hike Heard ‘Round The Dial
Cumulus claims Nielsen already hiked prices 36 percent in 2022. When Cumulus pushed back, Nielsen allegedly replied:
(Scene: Skeletor voice) “Fine, buy the national data alone for ten times the price.” we can only assume (cue Skeletor laugh). That’s like your cable company saying, “Sure, cancel TV — but now Wi-Fi’s $2,000.”
Meanwhile In The Land Of Free Markets
There is another ratings provider, Eastlan Rating, but Cumulus alleges Nielsen’s earlier Subscriber First policy already kneecapped them. Stations that didn’t buy Nielsen’s data were, according to the lawsuit, erased from its published rankings.
Why It Matters
Cumulus claims Nielsen’s conduct has distorted hundreds of millions of dollars in radio commerce, degrading product quality, inflating prices, and blocking competitors from gaining ground.
The Phil-Osophy on this isn’t just corporate drama; it’s about who defines truth in audio. If one company controls who counts, what counts, and how much it costs to be counted, then ratings stop measuring the market — they become the market.
The Bigger Signal
If the courts agree, it could reset how radio — and maybe all media — measures audiences in a world where AI and streaming already do it faster, cheaper, and smarter.
Today, platforms like iHeart’s app already know more about their fans than any diary or meter ever could. They can reach a much larger sample size at a fraction of the cost, then see when a listener skips, shares, pauses, replays, favorites, or taps through a live stream. That’s not a sample; that’s a census.
AI-driven platforms track engagement in real time, tie listening behavior to commerce, and even predict audience flow minute by minute. The same apps that play the music, deliver the news, or stream live sports will become the measurement serving as both playout system and analytics engine.
Nielsen tells radio estimates of who is listening. The next generation of tools will tell radio why they’re listening, how long, and what made them stay. The new challenge for programmers won’t be figuring out who’s tuned in; it’ll be knowing why they didn’t tune out.
What becomes of this lawsuit — who wins, who loses, who settles — is still to be determined. But one measurement isn’t changing anytime soon:
PPM: People Paying More.
(cue Phil Becker laugh), not necessarily evil, but there’s a hint of villainy
All statements describing Nielsen’s alleged conduct are drawn from the complaint filed by Cumulus Media New Holdings Inc. against The Nielsen Company (US) LLC on October 16, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Nielsen had not yet filed its response at the time of publication.
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Phil Becker is a weekly music columnist for Barrett Media who has built his career at the intersection of creativity, strategy, and operations leading brands, marketing, and content teams across more than 200 radio stations worldwide.
Known for being ahead of the curve, he was the first to integrate social influencers into broadcast brands, launch station apps years before his peers, and pioneer AI air personalities before anyone else in the world.
With leadership roles at Clear Channel, Citadel, Cox Media Group, Alpha Media, and international ventures—as well as owning and operating stations—Phil blends entrepreneurial vision with operational discipline in the messaging and marketing space. He also hosts the Phil-Osophy podcast.
I ran the Westwood One 24/7 Network for Cumulus, and before that, Dial Global and Jones. While you can certainly make the argument Nielsen charges too much for the data, this simply looks like Cumulus not wanting to pay at the local level. Traditionally, Nationwide has been sold as a separate product (Going back to the Arbitron days) to Networks, many of whom do not own radio stations. Nationwide was designed to bundle stations across many markets, not on an individual station basis. In fact, it was the local market reports that supported Nationwide. Nationwide is largely a by-product Nielsen sells to networks. Without the local market focus, Nationwide falls apart.