• by Frank Maggio , October 25, 2007

Background: I read with sheer horror today the headline "Google, Nielsen Form Alliance." And then I read Nielsen CEO David Calhoun's observation: "Our only choice is to think about Google as creating opportunity," Calhoun said, repeating: "Our only choice."

So I asked myself - hunter? Or hunted?

Let me begin by tossing a question out there to the five or six of you who don't work for a monopoly or oligopoly: What ever happened to the idea of REQUIRING competition? Seriously, how many of you feel safe and secure knowing that the Nielsen Company claims that it has "no choice" but to strike a deal with Google, after Nielsen has left YOU with no choice for the better part of half a century?

Fellow TV insiders, pull out your binoculars and let's go on safari. Know in advance that we are operating in a dysfunctional environment. If ours was an industry less meaningful than TV and media, we should be far less concerned. However, the U.S. TV industry represents the greatest bastion of multimedia communication in the world. Free speech, free access, and free and open competition should be hallmarks of our industry.

In an ideal world like, say, America, one would think that today's headlines mean we are FINALLY at the dawn of an era where a deep-pocketed, technology-savvy heavyweight might set about trying to compete with, and even grab a chunk of the TV ratings industry away from, Nielsen. Such a cataclysmic sea change might actually lead to -- dare I say -- INNOVATION and COST SAVINGS?

Fat chance. Why? Because we have allowed our industry's currency and research -- its very lifeblood -- to be dominated by the absolute worst form of monopoly in the world - a tyrannopoly.

Now, don't waste your time looking it up (though you might "Google" it tomorrow and see it for the first time). It's my word, but I offer it to the world to use in the rare (actually, VERY rare) instance that you run into a tyrannopoly in the wild. In fact, over the next two or three posts, I will attempt to provide you with valuable firsthand insights, honed from years of death-defying encounters with the dangerous, yet endangered, North American tyrannopoly.

Let's start the primer.

First, you will know you are in an industry controlled by a tyrannopoly as you approach its lair, by the carcasses that line the entrance. Tyrannopolies are voracious hunters of tender, fledgling competitors -- especially those cursed with ironic names, like "SMART Initiative." To survive a challenge with a tyrannopoly, one must always recognize that they tend not to share their billion dollar territories -- at all -- with anything that has even the potential of grazing in the fertile environs that they have created, exclusively for themselves. In fact, it is this characteristic of a tyrannopoly that defines the term itself: a company that controls, and often deviously protects, 100% of a $1 billion+ industry.

One would think that a beast this fearsome would move fast, have hawk-like vision, and have an acute sense of hearing. Quite the opposite. Indeed, most tyrannopolies exhibit surprisingly poor hearing; in fact, some argue they are completely deaf. However, through a network of captive, yet lethally symbiotic companies, tyrannopolies are quickly able to sense the approach of their next victims. Historical records lead me to believe that tyrannopolies have cultivated a preference for a distinct equine species - of the stalking variety. More often then not, these one-trick ponies are cruelly set loose, usually by captors, in the hunting grounds of tyrannopolies, loudly blurting out words like "better mousetrap" and "white paper findings." Their last, dying gasps tend to include phrases such as "test market results" and "proof of concept."

But death does not come quickly for all. In the unlikely event that a competitor survives long enough to actually engage the tyrannopoly, some interesting behavior has been observed. Witnesses liken it to a corporate game of cat and mouse, usually a haunting precursor to an inevitably bloody meal. The pattern has become quite obvious, at least based on my own field observations:

Destroy. Partner. Or acquire. But never share.

That's enough for now. There are more findings that I will attempt to divulge in my next epistle. In the meantime, I would like to ask our readers to weigh in on their own sightings of, or encounters with, a rare North American tyrannopoly. I will, however, warn all readers in advance that each and every response to this post should be screened for symptoms of a new, industrial strength strain of the Stockholm Syndrome.

These responses will, in fact, serve as the basis for our next chapter. And if there are no responses, well, that will be the most telling symptom of all.

Editor's note: Frank Maggio's company, erinMedia, has a federal antitrust suit pending against Nielsen Co.