VIACOM BLAMES ANTIQUATED RATINGS SYSTEM FOR LOWER SALES

Thanks to the Internet and digital technology, people don’t always watch television shows the way they once did — on their TV sets the moment they are broadcast — but traditional ratings data don’t always reflect that reality, Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman suggested during a conference call to discuss his company’s latest earnings report. "We are in a transitional moment and existing measurements have not caught up to the marketplace," he told analysts and reporters. Ad sales, Viacom said in an SEC filing, fell 5 percent in the quarter, largely due to lower ratings at its principal cable networks, which include MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, Comedy Central TMC, Logo, and BET. But Dauman suggested that those ratings had failed to take into account double-digit viewership growth rates on its Internet sites. The fall in ad dollars was partly offset by higher fees from cable and satellite companies for the Viacom channels and also from higher revenue from Viacom’s Paramount movie studio, whose latest Transformers film earned $1.1 billion worldwide.