Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios Signs Long-Term Agreement With Nielsen For Total Audience Measurement

NEW YORK, Aug. 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios, one of the largest independent producers and distributors of first-run syndicated television (TV) programming for broadcast television stations, has signed a long-term agreement with Nielsen for linear and digital measurement services. The agreement makes available Nielsen's best-in-class TV measurement for TV programs and commercial content in broadcast syndication and across all seven of the Entertainment Studios HD cable television networks. The Entertainment Studios HD networks include: PETS.TV, COMEDY.TV, RECIPE.TV, CARS.TV, ES.TV, MYDESTINATION.TV, and JUSTICECENTRAL.TV and collectively they reach nearly 80 million subscribers nationwide. 

"Nielsen's world-class tools and measurement systems will continue to help us demonstrate the total value of our audience with this long-term deal," said Byron Allen, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Entertainment Studios. "We are thrilled to be working with Nielsen as we look to unlock the full potential of our content, broadcast television programming, cable networks, and digital platforms for advertisers."

Nielsen's rich datasets will enhance Entertainment Studios' ability to fully analyze and showcase audience's characteristics, viewing habits and content engagement. When this additional wealth of information is combined with smarter and actionable advertising spend intelligence, it delivers enhanced value to Entertainment Studios during the media buying and selling process.

In addition, the Entertainment Studios digital video-centric news platform The Grio will leverage several solutions from the Nielsen Total Audience Measurement framework including Nielsen Digital Content Ratings (DCR) and Nielsen Total Content Ratings (TCR). The activation of Digital Content Ratings and Total Content Ratings will deliver daily updates that enable the comparison between digital and linear audiences with comparable metrics. The integrated solutions will provide unduplicated audience metrics that simplify the media selling process and assist with optimizing their available ad inventory regardless of the platform and ad load.

"Today's television environment is complex and requires faster, more powerful and flexible tools that cut through the clutter and deliver smarter insights that help inform business decisions," said Peter Bradbury, Managing Director, Nielsen National Client Solutions. "Nielsen's wide-range of products and services empower clients like Entertainment Studios to go beyond topline analysis and look at deep, in-market trends of how their linear and digital properties are performing. We are excited to take our relationship with Entertainment Studios to the next level by delivering a complete set of solutions that provides them with comparable metrics for digital and TV."

ABOUT NIELSEN
Nielsen Holdings plc is a global performance management company that provides a comprehensive understanding of what consumers watch and buy. Nielsen's Watch segment provides media and advertising clients with Total Audience measurement services for all devices on which content—video, audio and text—is consumed. The Buy segment offers consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers the industry's only global view of retail performance measurement. By integrating information from its Watch and Buy segments and other data sources, Nielsen also provides its clients with analytics that help improve performance. Nielsen, an S&P 500 company, has operations in over 100 countries, covering more than 90% of the world's population. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

ABOUT ENTERTAINMENT STUDIOS
Chairman and CEO Byron Allen founded Entertainment Studios in 1993. Headquartered in Los Angeles, it has offices in New York, Chicago, Denver, and Raleigh.  Entertainment Studios owns seven 24-hour HD cable television networks serving nearly 80 million subscribers: PETS.TV, COMEDY.TV, RECIPE.TV, CARS.TV, ES.TV, MYDESTINATION.TV, and JUSTICE CENTRAL.TV. The company also produces, distributes, and sells advertising for 41 television programs, making it one of the largest independent producers/distributors of first-run syndicated television programming for broadcast television stations. With a library of over 5,000 hours of owned content across multiple genres, Entertainment Studios provides video content to broadcast television stations, cable television networks, mobile devices, multimedia platforms, and the World Wide Web. Our mission is to provide excellent programming to our viewers, online users, and Fortune 500 advertising partners.

In 2015, Entertainment Studios purchased Freestyle Releasing, now called Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures, a full-service, theatrical motion picture distribution company that specializes in representing independent companies, major studios, and mini-major studios for the purpose of exhibiting their films as first-class theatrical releases. ESMP released 2017's highest-grossing independent movie, the shark thriller 47 METERS DOWN, which has grossed over $43.7 million to date. The digital distribution unit of Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures, Freestyle Digital Media, supplies quality commercial film and TV content directly to all US VOD/SVOD rental DVD/Kiosks and theaters using the latest cloud-based technologies to automate digital workflow. Freestyle Digital Media provides our content audience a positive digital viewing experience on every device everywhere.

In 2016, Entertainment Studios purchased The Grio, a digital video-centric news community platform devoted to providing African-Americans with compelling stories and perspectives currently underrepresented in existing national news outlets. The Grio features aggregated and original video packages, news articles, and blogs on topics that include breaking news, politics, health, business, and entertainment. Originally launched in 2009, the platform was then purchased by NBC News in 2010. In 2014, The Grio founders purchased their company back from NBC News and has since tripled its traffic rate. The digital platform remains focused on curating exciting digital content and currently has more than 20 million annual visitors.

SOURCE Entertainment Studios

Related Links

http://www.es.tv