• by Wayne Friedman , January 2, 2019

News of CBS Corp.'s lapsed contract with Nielsen, the media-measurement company, is having little effect on its stock price.

Early Wednesday morning post-New Year’s trading saw CBS stock up 3% to $45.00 -- while the overall stock market posted declines. The Dow Jones Industrials is down 0.6% -- 150 points -- to 23,189.

Nielsen’s contract with CBS -- said to be around $100 million a year -- expired December 31.

Reports suggest that CBS executives braced advertising staffers for such an event.

This means CBS cannot access Nielsen data from its own internal operations. But CBS can get some data from media agencies, according to executives.

For a long time, ad executives have complained about Nielsen’s efforts to account for all TV viewing -- linear TV, time-shifted and digital media programming viewing -- as well as synthesizing those numbers in into easily usable data.

CBS, like many other networks, has seen TV viewership of its Nielsen live-plus-seven days of time-shifted ratings continue to decline, around double-digit percentages. This current TV season, broadcast networks are down on average 11% to 12%.

Nielsen data has long been the “currency” from which TV advertisers account, measure and pay for deals with TV networks. It isn’t known what, if any, current scatter and/or upfront deals might be affected by the impasse.

CBS and Nielsen executives did not respond to inquiries at press time.