• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 21, 2007

A federal court has set an early 2008 trial date for erinMedia's antitrust suit against Nielsen Media Research, the TV audience measurement venture said in a statement issued late Tuesday in response to Nielsen's decision to launch a business that would compete directly with erinMedia's methods for modeling digital TV set-top data to produce ratings. In a related move, erinMedia said it was streamlining its operations, laying off the majority of its staff, and focusing its efforts on licensing its technology until the market is "opened" for competition.

In an interview prior to Tuesday's announcement, erinMedia founder Frank Maggio confirmed that the launch of Nielsen's new DigitalPlus unit "killed" efforts of Boston-based venture capital firm Spark Capital to close a $25 million round of funding, and to attract key strategic partners to join a coalition that would help erinMedia launch a service to compete with Nielsen. Publics Groupe Media, and an unnamed automotive marketer and television network were said to be among the potential backers being lined up by Spark.

Maggio said erinMedia would likely "add new claims based on Nielsen's recent actions" to the federal antitrust suit, and that he would also press to "escalate our request," and that erinMedia might file a separate complaint with federal regulators.

"We are evaluating all of that over the next couple of weeks. We are definitely marching forward with that," he said.

Maggio said some investors and strategic partners were already skittish about "fear of retribution" from Nielsen should they back erinMedia, and that the launch of Nielsen DigitalPlus killed any hope of convincing any to move forward with public support.

He said the majority of the erinMedia staffers being laid off were involved with programming, database management, and project management associated with deploying erinMedia's measurement systems. A core group of senior managers would continue to explore licensing deals and partnership with other companies, and erinMedia's measurement system would remain "operational" until it can be deployed.

Maggio said the derailment would not stymie the simultaneous rollout of ReacTV, an interactive cable TV programming service that had planned to utilize erinMedia's second-by-second audience ratings as proof of performance for its advertisers. The service, which has partial distribution on a Brighthouse cable system in Florida, expects to announce its second carriage deal in the next few weeks, and Maggio said the company already is exploring licensing the data from alternative suppliers, potentially TNS, which has been developing a similar approach to modeling digital set-top data directly from cable operators.

Nielsen previously rejected ReacTV's attempts to purchase data from Nielsen, citing its connection with rival erinMedia.