Re: Ratings have always been flawed
LA_Guy said:
Arbitron ratings have always been flawed. I used to work for a station that pulled 13-20 shares in RI. We'd always make the trek to Arbitron to Beltsville, MD to look at the diaries.
Gee, Arbitron has not been in Beltsville for several decades... they moved to laurel and then to Columbia... they have been in Columbia for several decades alone! Whatever you saw 30 or 40 years ago has changed significantly since then.
We'd find diary after diary not filled out except for the comments, where they would say they listened to our station all day, every day. We'd get ZERO from those diaries.
How do you quantify "all day?" Remember, methodology issues are approved, or not, by the MRC, which represents the end users of research. Diary comments are used as "hints" for unidentifiable diary entries, but the comments section is not processed as listening data.
People used to call us up offering to sell us blank diaries (we'd of course say no).
Strange. In my 39 years of Arbitron experience across many manrkets, I've never been offered a diary for sale, nor heard of one being offered. Yes, some listeners will call their favorite station to ask for instructions, but most stations have a procedure and policy on referring such calls back to Arbitron.
The only Spanish station in a nearby market is an LPTV on channel 6 being run as an FM station (it's in Ridgecrest-aimed straight at Palmdale from El Paso Peak, by the way). Even though they know that THOUSANDS are listening, it does not show up in Arbitron.
It's a TV station. Arbitron rates radio.
In Boston, it's been long known that if non-commerical stations were counted, WBUR would probably show up second or third in both drive times. Same thing in Chicago and Minneapolis.
The reports given to the press on 12+ for the diary survey don't include non-coms. But the data stations get in Maximiser do and always have included non-coms. In the PPM, we get commercial, non-coms and any web streams that show up.
In many markets, if you take all the shares and add them together, they add up to less then 90%. That tells me that either a whole lot of listening is to non coms, or Internet stations, or that there's a TON of stations that are getting less than a .1 share.
In the diary, MRS cuts off stations at around a 0.3. The press reports don't add to 100 shares because generally in the press they cut off before the bottom, and there is a bit of listening to stations that don't make the book.
In PPM, it all shows, even the zero share, tiny cume ones.
The people meter seems to me to be a solution that's still looking for a problem to solve. It trades one set of inaccuracies with another. First off, if you don't have a PPM encoder (and only the top 20-25 stations usually are given encoders) you don't exist as far as Arbitron is involved.
Every station in the MSA is given an encoder. Stations near the market are offered encoders for rent for nearly no charge. Web streams can be encoded if desired, as are HD2 and HD3 channels. Satellite can encode if it desires, and so can web stations. In fact, streams are showing in nearly all the PPM markets.
Second, there's no way to account for satellite and Internet listening with PPM.
Sure there is. See above.
Though satellite is stagnant, Internet listening went up almost 40% last year. Then you have the 'out of market' problem-where a couple of people travelling to a place like LA with their PPM meters on can make a station like KIIS show up in the easy podunk book 1000 miles away!
No, listening by LA metered persons shows up in the market they are home to, not places they travel to. The system, diary or PPM, registers all behaviour of each markets listeners no matter where they go. In Winter, 1979, a San Juan station showed up below the line in the NYC book, as an example.
What people do with the ratings is also a sham. Most agency buyers are white english speaking men under 30
Actually, media buyers tend to be women. If you work in a US agency, chances are you speak English.
and haven't a clue that the fastest growing demo is the 35-64 demo-and they also have the most disposable income these days too!
Buyers don't determine demos. They negotiate prices based on a media plan. And the plan specifies demos that generally come down form the client, and are hard and fast.
They have even less of a clue about how to deal with Hispanic media, which is why highly rated hispanic stations frequently bill half or less then lower rated english ones (yes, it's happening right here in L.A.).
Nah, the power ratios of Hispanic staitons can be as hig as 1.2 to 1 (Miami) or1 to 1 (houston) or about 0.8 to 1 in LA. Much of the reason for not buying Hispanic is the lack of creative in Spanish, and as advertisers discover the power of the Hispanic marktet, this slowly is changing. It has nothing to do with media buyers.
