Arbitron Announces Termination of Nielsen Media Research Option for PMM JV.

Arbitron Inc. announced the termination of Nielsen Media Research’s option, as granted in a May 2000 agreement, to join Arbitron in a commercial deployment of the Portable People Meter (PPM SM) in the United States.

On February 28, 2006, Nielsen Media Research did not exercise its option to participate in a commercial deployment of the Arbitron Portable People Meter as a radio and television ratings service in local markets in the United States.

Said Steve Morris, president and chief executive officer, Arbitron Inc: “Although we saw some economic benefits to our customers from a joint venture, the termination of the May 2000 option now gives Arbitron complete flexibility to meet the needs of our customers in terms of when and at what speed we deploy the Portable People Meter as an audience ratings system in the United States.”

We intend to work directly with the broadcast television and cable industry on additional, non-currency services that utilize the PPM,” said Mr. Morris.

“At the same time, Nielsen has also expressed to us their desire to use the Arbitron Portable People Meter as one component in their portfolio of solutions for television ratings,” said Mr. Morris. “Nielsen is particularly interested in using the PPM to add a measure of out-of-home television viewing to their existing television ratings services.”

Arbitron to focus on a “radio first” deployment of PPM

Arbitron will concentrate its efforts on previously announced plans to create a PPM ratings service for radio . To date, the company has announced signed contracts for a PPM-based radio ratings service with a number of agencies, advertisers and broadcasters.

“Now that we no longer have the obligations that came with the Nielsen option agreement, we are free to focus our resources on the best PPM ratings services possible for the U.S. radio industry ,” said Mr. Morris. “Our goal is to secure a critical mass of stations and agencies to allow us to go forward rapidly with the deployment of the Portable People Meter system for radio audience measurement in the United States.”

Arbitron and VNU to continue ‘Project Apollo’ pilot panel

The termination of the May 2000 option for Nielsen Media Research does not affect the effort by Arbitron and VNU to develop a national marketing research service based on Arbitron’s Portable People Meter system and ACNielsen’s Homescan technology.