An interesting Nielsen Audio diary keeping tutorial...

[davideduardo]

Perhaps you are right, but I remember seeing stories that PPM would gradually be implemented everywhere.

If you heard any such thing, it did not come from Arbitron. It was always recognized that the cost of continuous measurement would be too great for all but the largest markets where the revenue of the top stations could support the near doubling of the cost of four-book 48-week a year diary measurement.

Nielsen, who was going to partner initially with Arbitron back around 2000-2004, knew that too. Metered TV households were only implemented at the time in the top 30 or so markets for the same reason. There is a sample size below which metered viewing or listening can not go, even if the market population is much smaller. So El Paso or Fresno or Pensacola would pay about the same as Cleveland or Pittsburg or Sacramento... something neither radio nor TV revenue could afford.

What you have now is a piece meal system. You talk about the high cost, but shouldn't accuracy be more important?

There is adequate accuracy in the diary. The reason why the PPM was developed is because ad agencies wanted faster delivery and greater granularity. That is why TV adopted the meter, too: agency demands.

Radio did not really want metered measurement because it would not bring in greater revenue... just cause higher cost financed by radio alone.

You have stated that many Radio operators dislike the PPM because it delivers more relevant data.

I did not say that. Radio dislikes the PPM due to the high cost and the inability, still, of Nielsen to create true "mirrored" panels where there is not weighting. A true panel represents perfectly all the desired stratification variables perfectly... the PPM has not achieved that yet.

The diary system can find stations getting credit for listening that happened 15 years ago. Some guy writes down the Classic Rock station "he used to listen to".

And I have looked, literally, at millions of diaries over the 40-some years that I did diary reviews. Those amusing anecdotes are rare and not numerous enough to bias the outcome of a diary survey. And the system in existence even 30 or so years ago either matched correctly the data or put such an entry down as "unknown" so it counted for listening levels but not for specific station credits.

Anyway, since in the diary over 80% of entries in 25-54 are for the dial position (with or without a slogan, name or talent), it's pretty clear what people are listening to.

The PPM certainly has some flaws, but using different methodology based on market size isn't great either. It's like having different rules in the NFL for teams based on their market size...

The top 48 markets are like the NFL. The remaining ones are like Universities and even Junior Colleges. Different needs, different costs, different expectations.

Oh, and there is one Top 20 market that did not adopt the PPM: Puerto Rico. The broadcasters, who are sustained by over 100 local agencies, did not want the added expense and the local shops did not demand it. And that, at the time the PPM was first offered, was a $100 million plus revenue market with the leading station billing among the 100 highest billers in the country.