Nielsen 'Explores Sale' of Movie Tracking Division

Nielsen has appointed banker Jordan Edmiston to investigate a possible sale of the movie tracking arm of its film and home entertainment firm NRG, according to news site Deadline Hollywood.

With bases in Los Angeles and the UK, NRG (National Research Group) was set up in 1978 by Catherine Paura and Joseph Farrell, to provide market planning and research services to Hollywood's film studios. The firm offered tools to forecast a movie's box-office potential using tracking, test screenings, trailers and TV-spot testing techniques; and it also produced the 'Competitive Positioning' report, to provide studios with an early warning when one of their films was about to be launched at the same time as a competitor's film with the same demographic audience.

The founders sold the business to VNU in 1997 for $44m, then VNU acquired Nielsen Media Research and in 2002, integrated NRG into Nielsen. In 2008, NRG became part of Nielsen's BASES division, which provides new product optimization, marketing plan simulation and sales forecasting.

According to Deadline Hollywood, Nielsen is now looking to sell the NRG film portion of its business, and NRG employees have been notified about the press reports. Nielsen said in a statement that it does not comment on 'business conversations'.

Web site: www.nielsen.com .