In a lawsuit that could fundamentally remake the television industry, the owners of South Florida's WSVN-Fox 7 Thursday accused Nielsen Media Research of ''recklessly, arbitrarily, capriciously'' understating the audience of its shows and asked a federal court to declare the ratings company an illegal monopoly.
Sunbeam Television Corp., which owns WSVN as well as Boston stations affiliated with the NBC and CW networks, filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Miami. It accuses Nielsen of producing ''defective, wildly inaccurate ratings data'' that has reduced the station's value by $100 million in the past six months.
The company asked the court to find Nielsen in violation of both federal and state antitrust law, and for damages that were unspecified but likely to be huge: Sunbeam said it's losing $1 million a month.
Nielsen ratings, which determine how much advertisers pay for commercials, are the gasoline that fuels the engine of the television, and startled TV executives across the country said they could recall no precedent for the Sunbeam lawsuit. Nor, many of them said, could they quite imagine what their industry would look like if the suit succeeds.
