Top US media companies and marketers are working on their own consortium to break the grip of the dominant force in the TV audience measurement business. Media participants including networks owned by NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Discovery and Disney are frustrated by the glacial pace of development in the critical business of counting viewers in the digital age.

They expect to have the consortium operational by next month and have pulled in advertisers Procter & Gamble and AT&T, the top and third biggest US advertiser, along with Unilever.