Nielsen revises viewing numbers to help ESPN

Wall Street’🐲s most vocal soothsayer on digital media is BTIG’s Rich Greenfield, and he’s been hammering Disney’s ESPN over the size o𒆙f its customer base.

Disney CEO Bob Iger tanked Disney stock — and the rest of the media sector — after an earnings call in August confirming that ESPN is indeed shrinking. Investors are still worried that if the popular sports service is losing subscribers,🌌 things may be even bleaker for every other programmer.

On Thursday, ESPN reached out to reporters to let them know that cord-cutting isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds, and that the📖 reason is the way Nielsen revised its pay-TV universe estimates.

Nielsen (under client pressure) decided to remove broadband-only homes from its sample, but it didn’t restate his🔯torical data. It is now showing that, as of December, 1.2 million homes had cut the cord,ꩵ a much smaller number than its earlier figure of 4.33 million homes for the year.

Disney said in a statement: “Nielsen’s correction reinforces what we’ve said all a🌳long, that the vast majority of consumers prefer the multichannel bundle.”

To that, Greenfield responded: “If this is an important issue for ESPN, they should start releasing actual subscriber numbers rather than re✃lying on third parties [Nielsen]. If they are upset with the confusion, let’s see the actual number of paying subscribers in the US over five years.” He added that Nielsen’s flip-flop on the inclusion of broadband-only homes has created a “multiyear mess.” Can’t argue with that.