For as long as FTVLive has been in TV, we've never met anyone that's BFF with Nielsen. The company charges stations hundreds of millions of dollars a year for ratings services.

The trouble is, the ratings.

Nielsen claims its 'samples' are statistically accurate. Many people in TV, disagree. Nexstar was the first major broadcast group to drop Nielsen. Then came Fox. Now, FTVLive has learned that the Sinclair Broadcast Group is dumping Nielsen as well. 

Sources tell FTVLive that at the end of 2017, Sinclair will pull its 173 TV stations from Nielsen's client list. Add that to Nexstar's 171 and Fox' 28 and that means 372 fewer TV stations, to fleece.

Like Nielsen, we were never good at math, but even we can see that's going to significantly hurt the profit margin.