Discovery CEO David Zaslav blasted Nielsen, calling the measurement company “antiquated” and noting that “recently they’ve just been wrong.”
Speaking on Discovery’s second-quarter earnings call Tuesday, Zaslav said “it’s massively disappointing that Nielsen can’t get its act together and the answer is we have lost money. Everyone lost money. It’s just you’re dealing with a very antiquated delivery system.”
VAB, the trade group representing TV networks and distributors, claimed that Nielsen undercounted viewing because it wasn’t able to maintain the integrity of its viewer panels during the pandemic. The Media Ratings Council confirmed that both Nielsen’s national and local ratings services had under reporting viewing.
Also Read: VAB Asked MRC To Suspend Nielsen Ratings Accreditation
Nielsen has said that it is on track to rebuilding its panel, but Zaslav had little faith in Nielsen going forward.
“I don’t have a lot of hope for Nielsen,” he said. “I think somehow as an industry we’re going to have to work our way out of it from a technology perspective and leave them in the dust because they just can’t get it together. It’s a shame.”
Zaslav said that Discovery was working to augment the numbers from Nielsen with its own data.
“That’s the future, is to get better data,” he said. “We’re competing with the likes of Google and Facebook where they have the best data, the cleanest data and you compare it with this antiquated system.”
