Arbitron Diary, Day #1

[Jay_Surly]

The poster who suggested that we track our daily listening had a pretty good idea. I'm game, at least as time permits. This could be a daunting task to undertake on a day to day basis, but I'd sure like to read the daily listening routine of other posters.

Thus far, Channel 4 is the first electronic device that I've listened to, it's "radio with pictures." About 8 minutes

Weather Channel next for hurricane Rita coverage and "Weather On The 8's". About 10 minutes.

WBFO for NPR, roughly 60 minutes while I prepare for the day in and out of the house.

On the road today, visiting three clients in Erie, Niagara and Orleans counties.
I suspect I'll listen to WNED-AM, 97 Rock, Star, Q-107 and WHTT for a few minutes each.

Best regards,

Janos Surlikevich

 

[Jay_Surly]

Re: Arbitron Diary, Day 1 & 2

Phew. I think I bit off more than I can chew with this. I don't know how anybody keeps an accurate hour to hour account of what he or she listens to.

Last evening around 9, I came home after a busy day on the road. I put about 175 miles on the car and had four meetings with clients. The last thing I had time to do was log onto the board and describe my radio listening.

As it was, I listened to WYRK, WHTT and WTSS during the day while driving from appointment to appointment. I can't recall how much time I spent listening to each station. My rough guess is an hour each. Maybe a little more.

---

Today, my morning listening pattern was much like yesterday's, except I spent more time listening to 97 Rock and Howard Stern on WBUF (Jack), with a little bit of NPR on WNED-AM and WBFO and a newscast on WBEN. The time seems a blur.

No radio listening at all the rest of the day. Too busy with cell phone calls, returning messages and shuttling a client to a meeting. I do not listen to radio when I have a client in my vehicle. Because it's business, I give the client my undivided attention.

---

I'm not sure if I can maintain a day to day accounting of my listening. This is tedious.

Best regards,

Janos Surlikevich

 

[Element9]

Bingo! We Have A Winner

>
> ---
>
> I'm not sure if I can maintain a day to day accounting of my
> listening. This is tedious.
>

Here, Mr. Surlikevich, you have distilled one of the many problems with diaries as a means of measuring radio listening. The Arbitron Lottery. It's a sham. Think of the millions of dollars that are invested and the great number of jobs, from sales to programming, that are affected by this methodology.

It isn't as if the diary isn't totally wrong, it's simply not totally right. Add to this the fact that Arbitron is having problems getting through to the increasing number of unwired telephone households, people who have cell phones cannot be contacted by Arbitron in their preliminary call-out. The fact that college aged people couldn't care less about filling out a silly booklet that accounts for their radio listening and that people doesn't help. And as you so clearly indicated, folks are just too damn busy to correctly document their radio listening.

So it comes down to writing down the stations that are top of mind and familiar.

Why did WJYE have a monster book last Spring? Good programming? Probably. The "right mix" of old and new songs that women 35-54 enjoy hearing? Likely. The fact that WJYE is an acceptable "background" music station at work? Arguably. Television advertising and direct call out marketing? Bull's eye!

More than likely, that, more than anything else is what put the station top of mind. And when people had to complete their diaries on the last day of the diary week, it was easy for them to "remember what station they listened to last Tuesday."

This one of many reasons why high profile stations like WBEN, 97 Rock, WYRK and WJYE have a leg up on the pack.

-9-

 

[dj_niceshot]

Circle gets the Square...Life with the new PPM

In the recently hurricane ravaged city of Houston, TX, the folks at Arbitron are testing the newest 'radio currency', the Portable People Meter. This unit measures TV/Cable AND radio all at the same time, among other new features. Arbitron's website has a much more detailed explination on it's inner workings.

An intersting point from Arbitron PPM President:
When it comes to heavy listners, the diary is probably overstating listening durations,” said Bouvard. The PPM shows listeners tune in more stations more frequently, but they listen for shorter periods of time.

Probably??????

I agree that in the spend money to make money world, that call-out and TV are the best bang for the radio listeners buck (and ear!)

Does anyone thing this will do better or will it do the same job, but differently?



>
> Why did WJYE have a monster book last Spring? Good
> programming? Probably. The "right mix" of old and new songs
> that women 35-54 enjoy hearing? Likely. The fact that WJYE
> is an acceptable "background" music station at work?
> Arguably. Television advertising and direct call out
> marketing? Bull's eye!
>
> More than likely, that, more than anything else is what put
> the station top of mind. And when people had to complete
> their diaries on the last day of the diary week, it was easy
> for them to "remember what station they listened to last
> Tuesday."
>
> This one of many reasons why high profile stations like
> WBEN, 97 Rock, WYRK and WJYE have a leg up on the pack.
>
> -9-
>

 

[SirRoxalot]

PPM Effects

> Does anyone thing this will do better or will it do the same
> job, but differently?

I think that the PPM may negate some of the effects of advertising in other media. I'm sure that there are people who don't really know what station they're listening to, but the TV commercial says that if they're listening to Celine Dion, they must be listening to WJYE. They might have a Canadian station on, but they'll still write down WJYE because they heard Celine Dion.

There's also the boredom factor. Do you really keep track of the fact that you listened to 2 songs on Jack before they played something you hated? Screw them. "No diary entry for you", as the Ratings Nazi would say.

Another problem is that there's a certain "hipness" factor to consider when people are writing down what they listen to during the day. Back in the day, WPhD was the station of choice for the "cool" kids - but I'll bet that they not only knew who Jackson Armstrong was, but could probably tell you about the bit he did the night before. If they filled out a survey, it would have been WPhD 24/7, but that wasn't their real listening pattern. I think some of that is still true today, and not just with kids. This time around, it's "I don't listen to radio. I listen to my iPod or streams from cooler cities than Buffalo."

Of course, there's the possibility that the PPM will influence actual listening because people being surveyed want to appear "hipper" than they really are...