Arbitron to Exit TV Rating; Cites Sagging Profit : Media: The company’s move leaves Nielsen Co. as the sole service, prompting concerns that it will raise its prices.

Arbitron Co. said Monday that after 54 years of rating the size of television audiences it is leaving the business at the end of this year and will lay off 700 people nationally.

The move, prompted by sagging profit, will leave advertisers and TV and cable stations dependent on research from one service, A.C. Nielsen Co., prompting concerns that Nielsen will raise prices.

The costs of getting Nielsen’s services are bound to go up, said Betsy Frank, a media buyer at the New York advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising.

Research from both companies forms the basis for television advertising rates and a program’s on-air success. Both companies, which select households at random for their surveys, either collect the data electronically with meters that sit atop viewers’ television sets or give households diaries to record what is watched.

The move affects ratings for local advertising, not national advertising. Nielsen has long enjoyed a monopoly in that arena. Arbitron’s radio ratings business is unaffected.

Arbitron spokesman Thomas Mocarsky said Arbitron, a unit of Ceridian Corp., and Nielsen have been in a price war for three years and that, while stations in the 1980s routinely paid for both services, the recession has forced them to choose. He added that ratings services in major markets such as New York cost more than $1 million annually.

Only about 300 stations take two services now, compared to twice that many in the early 1980s, Mocarsky said, adding that the company has 500 customers.

Mocarsky said Arbitron will focus on developing a kind of rating that will offer customers a more in-depth picture of each market.