Wrong again. ‘Only because he doesn’t want to subscribe”. Buddy does want to subscribe until they raised the rate three fold. WUFO, WXRL, WBVK, WLOF do not subscribe and they will show up internally. Buddy will not show up on the sole reason he is not a minority.You're calling the paying of a standard rate "discrimination." It's not. If it was, someone would take them to court. Private companies can offer people discounts for any reason. Buddy could offer a special rate for women-owned businesses. It would be great PR. It wouldn't be discrimination.
No. Only because Buddy doesn't want to subscribe. He has the option to subscribe and he won't. Then he uses another reason to deflect. If they charged him MORE because he's white, that's discrimination. Or if he's the only owner treated this way. But all the other owners have the same choice.
The policy is the policy, and everyone knows it. Private companies are free to operate the way they want. Nobody forces Buddy to play black or female artists. If he wants to make a policy about women or minorities, he can.
Meanwhile, Alex Meruelo is a Cuban-born Hispanic owner of four radio stations in LA. Last year, he felt he was being overcharged by Nielsen. So he unsubscribed. Even though he's Hispanic, his stations didn't appear. Nielsen contacted him and made a deal he approved and now they're back.
Meruelo Media Cancels Subscription To Nielsen Ratings.
Meruelo Media, owner of four FMs in Los Angeles, has stopped subscribing to Nielsen’s PPM ratings service, effective with the Holiday survey. That means ratings for heritage rocker KLOS, rhythmicwww.insideradio.com
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Buffalo August 12+ radio trends
- Thread starter ckg279
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That's not the sole reason. The policy gives several exceptions. Not all of them are about minorities. None of the stations you list are competitors so none of them gain any advantage over you. The advantage is given to subscribers. Not minorities or non-coms.
But you've admitted the real reason, which is the rate was raised. As I said, you're trying to deflect from the real reason.
And they cannot use the ratings if they don't subscribe. It's irrelevant if ad agencies can see them or not. Once again, this thread has been Train WECKED...
Glenn,
A simple search of the Nielsen site uncovered these prohibitions. The link is below. A second link from Nielsen that I tried to post that contains the official copyright notice could not be opened, so I removed it. But you can easily find it in a Google search. I’d be very careful here. You obviously violated these guidelines by publishing proprietary data from Nielsen. It doesn’t matter that WECK is no longer a subscriber. You could be sued by Nielsen. Maybe it’s best if you step away from the keyboard. As others have mentioned, this is getting embarrassing. Not for me. I’m just a retired guy making assumptions. But this thread is not a good look for you or WECK.
A simple search of the Nielsen site uncovered these prohibitions. The link is below. A second link from Nielsen that I tried to post that contains the official copyright notice could not be opened, so I removed it. But you can easily find it in a Google search. I’d be very careful here. You obviously violated these guidelines by publishing proprietary data from Nielsen. It doesn’t matter that WECK is no longer a subscriber. You could be sued by Nielsen. Maybe it’s best if you step away from the keyboard. As others have mentioned, this is getting embarrassing. Not for me. I’m just a retired guy making assumptions. But this thread is not a good look for you or WECK.
I was alerted to what could be called a beyond-the-limits personal attack. I'm going to take a different perspective, which is to say "I get that you feel that Nielsen has an imperfect policy to say the least.
What we should be doing here is questioning the value of the Nielsen policy of excluding some unsubscribed stations while including others because their ownership has been determined to be held by groups that might be called "minorities" or "disadvantaged" or whatever the politically correct term for that is today.
For example, I could buy a station or two in my "home" market of Palm Springs. The Lord and BIA both know that the market has too many stations and, thus, I could find a couple that might cost less than what I paid for my newest car. And here is my point: if I put them in my name, and don't subscribe to Nielsen, they will exclude me from listings in most cases. But if I put majority ownership in my wife's name, I suddenly score two points: a woman and, bingo, an Hispanic woman. Heck, I could split the share and give some to two of my daughters... Hispanic and female, too. And one would create a new "protected" class as she is Hispanic, female and not a U.S. citizen; and she is about 50% indigenous so she gets more points than Caitlin Clark.
So there is really something significant to discuss, without the name calling, Glenn. And without the uppitiness, Mr. tbolt.
This seems to be a poorly implemented policy. But the exclusion of non-paying stations that have a significant share of audience is the basis for this particular case and I feel that not showing the full market's broadcasters is not a service to advertisers and is prejudicial against small operators as well. Can we just discuss that?
And that is a valid point. What we have is a policy intended to "help" certain groups of people that may truly not help the industry and the vanishing breed of independent owners.
Separate subject, and now I am sorry I brought Pittman into this because the real subject is deeper and worthy of discussion and dissection.
Actually, it is highly relevant. Even if a station is not subscribed but has numbers or a demo focus that is interesting to some agency accounts and their media planners, the agency can and will buy it if all the other things like CPP or whatever analytical point they use are "right".
And, outside of ad agencies and their equivalent, or the house agency of some bigger account, who uses ratings? Local direct accounts may be given "some ratings data on my station" as part of a pitch, but local direct is never such a clear formula buy.
At this point, I am wondering how many of those in this discussion have ever called on both direct and agency accounts as part of their job.
And, again, even if we take into account the raise in rate that Nielsen allegedly wanted Buddy to suck and swallow, there is a worthy-of-discussion subject in that ratings company's policy of listing some non-subscribers while listing others solely on the basis of belonging or not to a particular set of groups.
But that policy which you reference and link covers the inclusion of ratings data in "news stories" and not in sales and marketing. The main use of ratings is to establish price and value for advertisers... in particular, ad agencies.
Nielsen is not a particularly useful programming took as it does not indicate why a station is used or not used.
Radio ratings are a sales tool, and attempt to show to ad agencies that ads on a particular station or group are a good value based on past performance. And that past performance can turn out to be irrelevant if the formats and marketing of stations in a particular metro area have changed. So, to some extent, when the diary market ratings appear about a month to four months after listening was measured, the data is more like an autopsy than real time information.
Some of us work for large corporations with express policies on posting in public forums. You apparently don't, at least as far as your radio job is concerned. Rather than be silenced, some people prefer to adopt a policy of "plausible deniability." That doesn't make observations or opinions less valuable either as information or entertainment as the case may be. Keep in mind that this is a discussion board where ideas are the topic, not typically the posters themselves.
But as I pointed out in this thread, the policy is broader than that. It's not strictly about protected minorities, but also includes non-commercial stations and religious stations such as EMF. The focus on the minorities exception here is strictly political and has no place here. Especially given that the stations that he says get listed are not competitors to WECK. In other words, these stations would receive no competitive advantage to WECK. The competitive advantage is with the commercial stations that ARE listed and could see WECK's numbers even though agencies and the public can't.
I used the Meruelo example in this thread, pointing out that earlier this year the Meruelo group withdrew their four stations from Nielsen over the subscription price. THAT'S the real issue here, not the minority exception. Nielsen negotiated with Meruelo and they were reinstated. Nielsen would likely do the same for WECK, except that Buddy has other issues with Nielsen methodology that also have nothing to do with the minority policy.
The Nielsen subscriber policy is an example of a company with a monopoly using that leverage to drive up subscriptions. They're doing that because they're a profit-making company. My view (and I said it when this policy was instituted) is that this policy should be challenged on monopoly grounds. Once again it has nothing to do with minorities. I'm sure Nielsen knew how few minorities there are in broadcasting, so giving them an exception wouldn't matter. The real issue is leveraging monopoly power to drive up subscriptions, which is anti-competitive because there are no other ratings services available. I think that argument would be more effective with Nielsen in getting them to negotiate their rate.
Have you read the posts by "Glenn" closely? Buddy seems to be the type of person who would force an employee to give him access to a forum he was banned from.
If you're trying to make a case that White owners are being "disadvantaged" by Nielsen, it rings hollow. Maybe EOE requirements should be also be abandoned because they are unfair to Caucasians. Nielsen may be the only game in town, but that's nothing new...
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