TV Station Owner, Cowles Media Company, Signs Contract With Rentrak

PORTLAND, Ore., June 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Rentrak Corporation (Nasdaq: RENT), the leader in multi-screen media measurement serving the advertising and entertainment industries, today announced Cowles California Media Company and KHQ, Inc., a division of The Cowles Company and owner and/or operator of six television stations in four markets, is subscribing to Rentrak's leading local market TV measurement service, StationView Essentials. Under the agreement, Rentrak will provide Cowles' stations with more stable measurement of local television audiences based on the largest viewing and behavioral database available, in order for the group to receive a more accurate and relevant picture of audience behaviors.

"Cowles chose Rentrak because of their unique ability to take a large dataset and provide an in-depth analysis of both station and telecast performance so we are better able to sell our inventory based not only on a better measurement tool for the size of our audience, but also how attentive and relevant that audience is to the programs they watch," said Paul Dughi, President of Cowles California Media Company. "Based on StationView Essential's stability, granularity and the opportunities to overlay segmentation data in all of our markets, we have found Rentrak's data to be vital to every department within our organization including news, promotions, marketing and sales."

Cowles' stations now subscribing to the StationView Essentials service include KCBA (Fox 35) and KION (CBS) in Monterey, California; KCOY (CBS) and KKFX (FOX 11) in Santa Barbara, California; KHQ-TV (NBC) in Spokane, Washington and KNDO (NBC) in Yakima, Washington.

"The support Rentrak has received from stations, from major markets to smaller markets, is accelerating as the need for a more stable and comprehensive measurement currency becomes a necessity in order to remain competitive in today's fragmented TV environment," said Steven Walsh, Rentrak's Senior Vice President, Local Market Sales.

Available in all 210 local TV markets, Rentrak's StationView Essentials service is uniquely equipped to provide the television database currency using the only fully-integrated system of detailed satellite, telco TV and cable viewing information from millions of televisions nationwide. There are 31 stations in 17 markets currently subscribing to Rentrak's TV database currency which provides the industry with a clear view of TV audiences through access to Rentrak-proprietary qualitative metrics.

About Rentrak Corporation

Rentrak Corporation is a global digital media measurement and research company, serving the most recognizable companies in the entertainment industry. With a reach across numerous platforms including box office, home entertainment, video on demand and linear television, broadband and mobile, Rentrak has developed more efficient metrics to be used as alternative currencies for the evaluation and selling of media. Rentrak is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with additional offices worldwide. For more information on any of Rentrak's services, please visit www.rentrak.com.

SOURCE Rentrak Corporation