By the numbers: According to Parrot's research given to Axios, "Game of Thrones" is now 159 times more in demand in the U.S. than the average TV show title.

• This continues to put the show into Parrot's “exceptional” demand category, of which Parrot says only 0.01% of TV series manage to enter.
• To give you a sense of scale, other shows in the exceptional category, like "The Walking Dead" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" noted in the chart above, don't come close to the "Game of Thrones" in terms of demand.

"Demand" is defined as the desire and want for content and is composed of actual viewership (streaming and downloads), social media engagement (hashtags, liking, sharing), and research actions (reading about shows, writing about shows, etc.).

• Parrot has built its business by mostly measuring demand, and its work is cited frequently by Hollywood trade publications.

Meanwhile, the upcoming season finale, airing April 14th, is putting pressure on its parent company HBO and Pay-TV provider Dish to come to a distribution agreement, Bloomberg reports.

• HBO has lost millions of customers due to the months-long dispute.
• Dish has suffered from major subscribers losses due in part to blackouts with HBO and, until recently, Univision.

Nielsen stock was down roughly 10% Friday after the New York Post reported that private-equity giant Blackstone Group was bowing out of the bidding process.

• Sources tell The Post that Nielsen's debt load was the reason Blackstone backed out of its bid.
• Nielsen, which has been around for nearly 100 years, has struggled to keep its consumer insights business growing, since many of its biggest retail and packaged goods clients have slashed costs. As a result, it's reportedly been looking to sell for upwards of $10 billion.

Comscore stock was down roughly 30% after CEO Bryan Wiener and President Sarah Hofstetter — both of whom came to Comscore less than a year ago from media agency 360i — abruptly stepped down, citing irreconcilable differences with the company's board.

• Comscore, which has taken on the role as the leader in digital measurement and Nielsen's biggest rival, has been plagued by corporate drama.

Between the lines: The media industry has been rooting for Comscore's success, in part to provide market competition to TV measurement rival Nielsen, which has been criticized for not having the market pressure to innovate fast.

• But while Comscore has made gains in cross-platform measurement and won several local TV contracts, the company has been plagued with bad corporate drama every time it seems to make some progress.
• The company gutted its board in 2017 following a series of executive departures and after being removed from the Nasdaq exchange for delayed submissions of financial documents.
• It announced that it was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018, after revealing that it overstated revenues by more than $127 million from 2013 to 2015.

Be smart: Sources say that the rift between Wiener and Hofstetter and the Comscore board were over what was best for the company versus what was safest.

• Wiener had outlined a plan for several strategic investments last quarter in order to bring Comscore ahead of market rivals that the board thought were too costly given their goals to maximize short-term profits.

The bottom line: The ever-evolving nature of media is putting pressure on the companies that have made businesses out of measuring the media.