After a nine month review by government regulators, Nielsen’s $1.3 billion acquisition of Arbitron was approved in September. Henceforth, Arbitron will be called Nielsen Audio. More importantly, Nielsen will now be, for the most part, the sole company to measure the audience of the estimated $70 billion spent annually on local and national television and $16 billion spent annually on local and national radio. While there are concerns about Nielsen becoming the sole company measuring the currency for both radio and television (which was the primary reason for the nine-month long government review), there could be some positives for the research community and radio.
