How many of you would like this feature on your radio?

[Skynet74]

A small digital display above the tuner that tells you exactly how many people are tuned into that station at that very moment. It's just one of those things I just happened to think about. I know that radio stations would love that feature! The internet already has such a feature with online streams and chat rooms. It's not as if the technology doesn't exist to tell you how many people are tuned in. It's just not built in to todays radios.

Of course I realize there would be complications involved. Each radio would have to have a transmitter built in to send such data back. What happens if you happen to be listening to a 50,000 watt station that is 200 miles away. It's doubtful that a small built in transmitter would be strong enough to get your data back to the station. So a different solution would definitely have to be worked on. Plus the data wouldn't even be accurate unless everybody was using a newer radio with this technology built in. It would take years and years for all the old radios people have to be phased out before this technology would start to become more accurate.

Maybe 100 years in the future something like this will exist. I just wish there was a little red LED display on my radio right now with constantly changing numbers so I could see exactly who is popular and who is not. That would be kind of neat.

 

[N1WVQ]

Many a G.M., P.D. & host would be sweating this! Micromanaging to the extreme!

 

[Tom Wells]

Too much feedback is a distraction.
One of the major problems with excessive "measurement" is a fixation on the metrics.
When you're paying too much attention to the metrics, you're not fully engaged in what you're really doing.

You don't watch your feet while you're dancing, or your hands while you're playing music.

I would NOT like this feature to become a part of radio.

 

[aaronread]

It's not as if the technology doesn't exist to tell you how many people are tuned in. It's just not built in to todays radios.

That would be fantastically expensive to build into every radio; the back-end architecture would be insane. Until then, the best we've got is the PPM and it's nowhere near granular enough to achieve what you describe. They'd need to triple the number of meters in each market at least...BUT, I concede that if that were done, it would be fairly simple to transmit the information via RDS (at least on the FM's).

But yeah, it might be kinda interesting to have that sort of interactivity. Huge potential for insanity to kick in with management, true. But I could envision it being sort of like those "Estimated MPG" meters on modern cars, that show you in real time how your driving habits impact your fuel economy. Not quite sure how having such granular data could be used interactively by the listener, though. Maybe it can't, really. I dunno.

Plus you get into the problems with trying to oversimplify Arbitron data here. If you could actually have an accurate raw count of the number of people tuned to a given station (you can't, but if you could), that would be interesting but it's not terribly meaningful. A total count doesn't mean much to advertisers, for example. The count of listeners in specific demos in specific areas is far more useful, and the count of listeners who listen within a specific timeframe (AQH) is even moreso. You can't transmit that data across such a narrow channel in any meaningful way. And that's assuming you could actually count the listeners, as opposed to the PPM which is pretty granular in the abstract but still is sampling a relatively tiny group of people and extrapolating out from there.

 

[haverhill01835]

Nice idea Skynet - but how would/do you tell the listeners apart from the folks who have the radio on in the background (i.e. donut shops, offices, etc.) which would equal one listener, but in actuality, might be more. Or less if that one listener happens to leave his/her office.

Tech like this could/will happen.