Arbitron's declining "quality" - what will happen?

[RadioPhillyFan]

http://www.radioinsights.com/2012/04/arbitron-shoots-own-foot-radio-suffers-the-pain.html

With arbitron starting to lose credibility in some markets, and it asking for stations to pay to get them in the listings, do you think an alternative company will be formed or a prexisting one will go into the business to combat these actions of Arbitron?

Personally, I believe in a matter of months we will have an alternative company.

 

[TimeIsTight]

Personally, I believe in a matter of months we will have an alternative company.

The change is that Arbitron will no longer release any information on stations that do not pay it for services.

So, if these stations don't pay Arbitron, they probably won't pay for an alternate service either, and the stations that do pay will stay with Arbitron.

Among the things that will happen now is that the public will not see that some non-commercial stations actually have a bigger audience than some of Arbitron's paying customers.

There are also stations like WHLI on Long Island, that decided not to participate in PPM ratings because they sell mostly to local advertisers who pay no attention to ratings, and because they have an audience of retirement age or older. WHLI is an AM with a signal that is picked up in diary markets in other states and even though it didn't encode for PPM, it was still showing up in diary markets where people wrote down its call letters. Now, since it doesn't pay Arbitron, it won't show up in any ratings reports at all.

The ad agencies and other Arbitron subscribers will still get to see all the ratings for all the stations, its just that the public won't get to see the ratings for stations that don't pay to be rated anymore. Some payers were complaining that non-paying stations were using the free "publicly released" information to sell commercials and compete with them. They essentially say "if you want to play, you ought to pay."

 

[davideduardo]

With arbitron starting to lose credibility in some markets, and it asking for stations to pay to get them in the listings, do you think an alternative company will be formed or a prexisting one will go into the business to combat these actions of Arbitron?

Personally, I believe in a matter of months we will have an alternative company.

Nielsen, the company most prepared to do radio ratings, entered the market (for the second time in its long history) several years ago, and after doing it's unique sticker diary survey in a number of markets for about two years, they pulled the plug and left the field.

Arbitron "made" The Pulse and Hooper go away by selling the service to agencies. When stations saw Arbitron was being used for buying, they canceled Pulse and Hooper and went with Arbitron. That was forty years ago, give or take.

Various others have tried and failed. It's not going to happen.

Arbitron appears to be closing in on wide PPM accreditation by the MRC, per statements by George Ivie of the MRC two weeks ago at the Radio Ink seminar. With the diary survey accredited in all markets but one (Puerto Rico) that would mean that agencies... the only place where credibility is important... will have a high confidence level in both Arbitron products.