Nielsen to Deliver Rating Services for Nexstar’s 197 Local Television Stations, National Unwired Ratings, Digital Subchannels, Antenna TV and National Distribution of WGN America

New York, NY, and Irving, Texas – January 6, 2020 – Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN) (“Nielsen”) and Nexstar Media Group Inc. (NASDAQ: NXST) (“Nexstar”) today announced a multi-year agreement whereby Nielsen will provide a comprehensive suite of measurement services for all broadcast and cable entities across Nexstar Media Group, including 197 local television stations and digital subchannels in 115 markets, and national ratings for cable entertainment network WGN America and digital network, Antenna TV.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nielsen will also provide Nexstar with its Scarborough Qualitative Service, which offers actionable and dynamic insights on the product consumption habits, demographics, lifestyles and media usage of today’s consumers, as well as several cross-platform solutions and digital measurement services including Digital TV Ratings (DTVR), Digital Content Ratings (DCR) and Digital Ad Ratings (DAR). In addition, Nielsen will be providing supplementary support services such as Rhiza, Grabix, Prime Lingo and County Coverage to all of Nexstar’s local markets, as well as measurement of the Nexstar unwired universe that today reaches more than 69 million television households across 43 states.

“Nexstar Media Group is a true leader in the broadcast industry with a long, proven record of driving revenue and profits for advertisers,” said Peter Bradbury, Executive Vice President, Media, at Nielsen. “Our alliance with Nexstar will leverage Nielsen’s unique suite of measurement services to establish a cross-platform currency that will provide audience insights across local linear TV, cable, mobile, desktop and over-the-top. We are committed to working actively with Nexstar to ensure that every station has the tools it needs to achieve its business objectives and deliver value and results to advertisers.”

“Nexstar’s company-wide relationship with Nielsen will allow our promotion, news and advertising sales teams to benefit from Nielsen’s full suite of audience ratings and combined audience data across all platforms in all Nexstar markets,” said Timothy Busch, President of Nexstar Broadcasting Inc. “Nielsen’s ability to provide unified audience measurement across the entire 115 market Nexstar U.S. television household footprint will further support our company-wide commitment to best serve local and national advertising clients, with verified viewing and consumption data.”

Busch continued, “The combination of Nielsen’s ratings data and qualitative products will provide additional insight into consumer viewing across all screens, enabling Nexstar to serve advertisers with the solutions required to seamlessly connect linear and digital behavior and help businesses drive growth.  Our sales teams will share hard data with advertisers — large or small, national or local – to present the strategic benefits of impression measurement which will allow brands and advertisers to maximize the reach and effectiveness of their spending across every available media channel.”

In October, Nielsen announced that it had completed a major transformation of its local television business combining advanced meter technology, big data and people-powered panels into its local TV measurement service. This announcement of new currency measurement marked the capstone of a comprehensive overhaul across 208 local markets.