• June 11, 2004

Claiming it would suffer an "incalculable loss of advertisers and revenue" Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Thursday filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles seeking an injunction that would block the rollout of Nielsen's local people meters in the market. The move is the latest legal twist in a series of efforts by opponents to stop Nielsen's deployment of the new meters in Los Angeles and Chicago and to get Nielsen to stop using them in New York until questions surrounding them can be resolved. Ironically, Nielsen uses local people meters in Los Angeles to measure audiences for its local Hispanic ratings service in the market, a service that was rolled out in 1992 with backing from Univision and other Spanish-language broadcasters. In a statement, Nielsen said the suit has "no merit in, in either law or fact, and we intend to fight them."