Nielsen to reissue LA books back to October, 2017

[davideduardo]

From Inside Radio:

Nielsen To Reissue Seven Months Of L.A. Ratings.

Nielsen has informed clients that it removed four homes from its Los Angeles PPM panel, effective with the April survey ratings released today. “An internal review determined that these homes did not meet our compliance and data integrity standards,” the company told clients in a product notification. Nielsen says its impact analysis of back data determined the survey months of October 2017-March 2018 met its reissue guideline and it will begin reissuing ratings from those months starting with the March 2018 survey on May 22.

It's good to see Nielsen accepting a deficiency and taking corrective steps.

 

[CTListener]

From Inside Radio:

Nielsen To Reissue Seven Months Of L.A. Ratings.

Nielsen has informed clients that it removed four homes from its Los Angeles PPM panel, effective with the April survey ratings released today. “An internal review determined that these homes did not meet our compliance and data integrity standards,” the company told clients in a product notification. Nielsen says its impact analysis of back data determined the survey months of October 2017-March 2018 met its reissue guideline and it will begin reissuing ratings from those months starting with the March 2018 survey on May 22.

It's good to see Nielsen accepting a deficiency and taking corrective steps.

Can one hack the PPM, or is this a case of someone gaming the system by, say, leaving a meter near a radio set to a certain station for a long period of time during which the actual listener is somewhere else or asleep? Or perhaps someone in these households was found to have some connection to a radio station?

 

[davideduardo]

Can one hack the PPM, or is this a case of someone gaming the system by, say, leaving a meter near a radio set to a certain station for a long period of time during which the actual listener is somewhere else or asleep? Or perhaps someone in these households was found to have some connection to a radio station?

Until Nielsen makes further explanations public, we can only look at the data in their release:

Four households / dwelling units were removed for the sample for non-compliant behavior.

That means that the household members (that can be from one person to a large family or "dwelling sharers" age 6 and over) were not doing what their instructions told them to do, or, alternately, that they did not correctly specify the characteristics of the household.

A meter does not register unless there are "human behaviors" detected, such as periodic movement. The meter has a motion detector. Algorithms try to detect non-human motion, such as putting the meter on a dog or attached to a fan.

Irregular behavior, like every person listening at the same times and to the same station are detected and the representative calls and tries to get each person to carry their own meter.

If a media-associated household is detected, it is removed. Of course, that is not always easy to determine.

Back in the diary days in the big markets, there were incidents of stations trying to "buy" diaries or influence their contents. When discovered, books were reissued without those diaries. Today's announcement is a PPM version of the old diary problem we have seen for the last half-century!

 

[DaveBayArea]

Four households / dwelling units were removed for the sample for non-compliant behavior.

I'd be curious to learn how these four households affected the overall ratings. In a market the size of LA I would think it takes hundreds if not thousands of meters to get a good cross-section of the population. But I don't claim to be an expert at these things and never will. It does surprise me tho.

Dave B.

 

[boombox4]

^^^^^ I also am curious as to the numbers of meters used, to where 4 bad ones could skew ratings in a market of 12 million people.

 

[davideduardo]

I'd be curious to learn how these four households affected the overall ratings. In a market the size of LA I would think it takes hundreds if not thousands of meters to get a good cross-section of the population. But I don't claim to be an expert at these things and never will. It does surprise me tho.

Dave B.

There are approximately 3000 meters “in tab” in LA.

Given a persons using radio (PUR) for 6AM to Midnight of around 9, that means that on average about 280 meters are actually detecting listening at any given time. So a #1 station with a 5 share would have an average of 12 to 14 meters detecting it.

Remember, Nielsen kicked out four household. Most household have a number of people in them, and all must participate to be on the panel. So the key number is “how many meters”.

So if those 4 households have, let’s say, 25 total meters, then you can see how increased listening to any particular station could very significantly affect its numbers.

 

[boombox4]

Thank you for your explanation, Mr. Eduardo. It really helps.

 

[pjc1961]

Turns out that KLAX was the station most affected by the removal of the 4 households - they dropped 3.4-2.4 in the reissued March 2018 rankings.
11 stations in the top 20 added 0.1 shares to their original figures. KNX + KAMP moved up a spot; all other Top 10 rankings were unaffected.

Story: http://www.insideradio.com/free/kla...cle_5abe7992-5e51-11e8-be6e-d7eed564f043.html

Nielsen Audio Top Line Rankings home page (select "Los Angeles" from drop-down menu),
then for L.A. - to see revised March 2018 data, click on the head of the March '18 column to see revised rankings/shares:

https://tlr.nielsen.com/tlr/public/market.do?method=loadAllMarket

 

[davideduardo]

Turns out that KLAX was the station most affected by the removal of the 4 households - they dropped 3.4-2.4 in the reissued March 2018 rankings.

And the KXOS morning show lost 50% of its share from the first issue of March and now the reissue.

 

[pjc1961]

The February 2018 reissue has similar results to the March reissue.

In age 6+, KLAX dropped from 3.5 to 2.3 and KXOS dropped from 2.1 to 1.8.
Several stations up and down the list increased by 0.1 shares.

"Old" L.A. Ratings for February 2018: http://www.talkers.com/february2018ppms/2-losangeles.jpg
Reissued L.A. Ratings for February 2018: https://tlr.nielsen.com/tlr/public/...hod=sortRatingTable&sortingColumn=RateSurvey0
(may have to click on "FEB 18" column heading to get results "highest-to-lowest")

If "new" ratings page doesn't open properly, go to main page at https://tlr.nielsen.com/tlr/public/market.do?method=loadAllMarket
and select "Los Angeles" from the drop-down market menu, then when next page opens click on column heading labeled "FEB 18" for "new" results.

 

[CTListener]

So all four households were likely heavy listeners to Spanish-language radio, especially with a Regional Mexican music format. I suppose we'll never know exactly what those folks did to get disqualified this way. Would anyone hazard a guess? I assume their PPMs were logging an awful lot of KLAX and KXOS listening over the months in question. How much would have been needed to affect the overall numbers the way it did?