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Gainesville-Ocala Ratings Posted (All of three stations)
- Thread starter Jeff2
- Start date
All industry professionals know that the overall 12+ was meaningless except for minor bragging rights to the masses. What Arbitron is doing is purely vindictive but worse, has shown the world that in the 85th market of the US they could only get 2 subscribers. Lets see this play out over other markets and I think it will spell the end of Arbitron as we know it. They cant keep jacking up their rates to make up for the many stations saying they can live without. I doubt they charge the agencies a lot either.
Bring it on Eastlan, hello Neilson, anybody else out there? This is an industry crying out for competition.
Bring it on Eastlan, hello Neilson, anybody else out there? This is an industry crying out for competition.
Funny thing is WOGK isn't even on there. 93.7 was the 1st station in the market to subscribe to Arbitron as well. With the full-market, City-Grade coverage that almost guaranteed 1# ratings for the 93.7 signal. Putting signals that only covered one city but not the other very well at a huge disadvantage. Which is pretty much all stations in the market besides WKTK and WSKY.
gamefreak said:
Huh? They're listed-- but they don't subscribe. They currently have a contract with Eastlan.
And here is where it gets interesting. I am not a statistician but lets look at the three stations measured by both services
WSKY Eastlan 9.8 Arbitron 6.3
WKTK Eastlan 4.8 Arbitron 5.8
WYKS Eastlan 3.6 Aribtron 3.5
Both had them in the same order, except of course Eastlan has WOGK as #1. Any of you number crunchers out there care to comment on this?
WSKY Eastlan 9.8 Arbitron 6.3
WKTK Eastlan 4.8 Arbitron 5.8
WYKS Eastlan 3.6 Aribtron 3.5
Both had them in the same order, except of course Eastlan has WOGK as #1. Any of you number crunchers out there care to comment on this?
Nostalgia said:
I guess I fail to see what you're getting at.... The fact that both have them ranked in the same order? It's a coincidence.
OK, obviously not clear. The fact that both had them in the same order is good. But its the variance in the numbers that is my issue. For WYKS a .1 difference is clearly within any survey margin of error. But a 3.5 difference for WSKY is pretty wide considering they call the Arbitron numbers "currency". WSKY would like the Eastlan numbers, WKTK would not! Perhaps I am way off base, that is why I asked for input from people who pour over ratings data for a living.
Nostalgia said:
In the largest markets--NYC, LA, Chicago--sample sizes are so huge that variations of a point are a big deal, but not in smaller markets like G-O. It doesn't stop radio folks or advertisers from exaggerating the importance of it all, but wise people step back from ratings and ignore the decimal points and just try to grasp the general lay of the land. Look at the bigger picture, and look at it over time. When you do that, the stations you think should do well usually do well, and the stations you think are shit usually are tail-enders. And the ones you think should be somewhere in the middle are usually in the middle.
Keep in mind that even though non-subscribers are not listed in these public postings for general consumption--and don't get copies for themselves... and aren't supposed to use the ratings to sell advertising (get caught and pay huge fines)--the stations (WOGK, WRUF, et cetera) are still listed in the Arbitron reports received by ad agencies and subscribing stations.
And that is what K-93.7 is counting on. The advertisers can read. And they'll see that WOGK is still kicking ass, and they'll continue to buy advertising. So the money keeps rolling in, but they save bundles by not subscribing. Smart move, eh?
Yeah, smart move, as long as Arbitron continues to survey the market. The risk--and it is an enormous risk--is that the remaining subscribers will say "Shit, we're tired of underwriting these Arbitron surveys for all these damn freeloaders," and cancel their subscriptions, too--causing Arbitron to drop Gainesville-Ocala as a "market." So Alachua and Marion counties (and Levy and Dixie and Gilchrist?) return to just being wide spots in the road on the way from Orlando to Atlanta... or from Tampa to Jax... and G-O no longer shows up on ad agency radar.
And all that agency money goes away.
Trust me. I've seen it happen, it many markets already. For stations like WOGK it's a multi-million dollar roll of the dice. Hope they've got Lady Luck on their side...
Oh, one more quick observation on this topic.
I'm seriously surprised--shocked, really--to see a major research institution like the University of Florida bail out of the only recognized audience research firm in the radio industry--Arbitron.
If UF has gone with Eastlan--with all due respect to Eastlan (they seem like nice people and their reports usually correlate reasonably well with Arbitron's)--Eastlan has very little acceptance among agency buyers or media professionals. Like it or not, Arbitron is the standard. Eastlan is "the little guy"... "the other guy"... a knock-off.
As such, the vast majority of UF College of Journalism & Communication graduates will need to be familiar with Arbitron research--how it works... its strengths and weaknesses. Those who go into programming will need to know the all the tools available for programmers within Arbitron's portfolio of services. And those who go into sales and management need to be intimately familiar with the nuances of Arbitron within the media buying universe.
So from an academic standpoint, discarding the industry standard is pretty much inexcusable. If they've reached a point where their Arbitron subscription is considered "unaffordable"... well, that's a management problem--a programming problem and/or a sales problem.
But, frankly, that would be a cop-out. UF can afford damn near anything it wants.
I'm seriously surprised--shocked, really--to see a major research institution like the University of Florida bail out of the only recognized audience research firm in the radio industry--Arbitron.
If UF has gone with Eastlan--with all due respect to Eastlan (they seem like nice people and their reports usually correlate reasonably well with Arbitron's)--Eastlan has very little acceptance among agency buyers or media professionals. Like it or not, Arbitron is the standard. Eastlan is "the little guy"... "the other guy"... a knock-off.
As such, the vast majority of UF College of Journalism & Communication graduates will need to be familiar with Arbitron research--how it works... its strengths and weaknesses. Those who go into programming will need to know the all the tools available for programmers within Arbitron's portfolio of services. And those who go into sales and management need to be intimately familiar with the nuances of Arbitron within the media buying universe.
So from an academic standpoint, discarding the industry standard is pretty much inexcusable. If they've reached a point where their Arbitron subscription is considered "unaffordable"... well, that's a management problem--a programming problem and/or a sales problem.
But, frankly, that would be a cop-out. UF can afford damn near anything it wants.
Nostalgia said:
Oh, ok. I understand now. I hear ya... a big difference between the two quite often, actually. It really does make you wonder. Eastlan claims double the sample size over Aribtron, plus (IIRC) they do phone survey's and get the response of people right away. Though it still may rely on their memory, they get the information sooner.
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