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Local individual ratings question

J

jamie814

How do you find out the ratings for individual air personalities? Whenever the media writer for the Enquirer runs the arbitron numbers, all he does is show an overall breakdown for the station as a whole. He never lists the specific morning drive and afternoon drive numbers, etc...
 
You have to either subscribe to arb yourself or get them from somone who does.
 
Gary is correct.

However, if arbitron sniffs that "too much" information is being shared, they will embargo the numbers entirely, only sharing with a select few buyers of the book.

I always find it interesting that newspaper reporters (apparently not in Cincy however) in other cities often will show # breakdowns for individual shows without arbitron having a fit. If a media buyer did this, they would raise hell!
 
thanks for clearing that up. The media writer I was referring to was Robert Feder with the Chicago Sun Times. He is a heck of a reporter and columnist and he always prints a total breakdown every quarter of all the shows/times etc... It's kinda frustrating not to be able to see that here in Cincy. Why is it such a valuable thing that is so hard to get access to? You'd think it would be public record that is readily available. Kinda like baseball stats.
 
jamie814 said:
Why is it such a valuable thing that is so hard to get access to? You'd think it would be public record that is readily available. Kinda like baseball stats.
Click to expand...

Although that's a valid point... it's because that's how Arbitron makes their money: selling books. I'm surprised that a Chicago newspaper can do that and not be challenged by them.
 
In both markets I've worked in (both in the 30's DMA), the newspapers revealed very detailed ratings and share information among local sportstalk programs every ratings period. In fact, the ratings & share "scorecard" was highly anticipated and treated like a football score, fueling heated discussion on message boards and within the community.

How the reporters we're able to do it is beyond me, although I'm sure it wasn't hard to find someone to leak it to the media--especially if you were kickin' butt! I'm just surprised Arbitron didn't freak out about it.
 
Arbitron doesn't mind ratings information released in markets where they have a high percentage of station subscribers. The concern is that one or two stations will not pay them for the info, but get it from another source. All the major players in Cincy are subs (Radio One, CBS/Cumulus/Entercom, CC, etc), so no embargo no matter how much info is presented.

If you look back at the time where CBS didn't renew the ARB deal, there was a plan to embargo all markets where CBS owned stations.

Look at Lansing, MI. Major players don't pay... ratings not released to public.,
 
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