MRC Accreditation -- what does it mean?

[wadio]

According to this article:

http://arbitron.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=797

... the Media Rating Council® (MRC) has pulled accreditation from a number of markets. It appears that New York is not currently accredited. What does this mean?

 

[pjc1961]

Media Rating Council web site - the "About Us" page link:

http://mediaratingcouncil.org/About Us.htm

and home page: http://mediaratingcouncil.org/

 

[wadio]

Yeah, but in reality does it mean New York's PPM ratings should be ignored because the Media Rating Council has failed to accredit them? In other words, what weight does this organization have, if any?

 

[davideduardo]

Yeah, but in reality does it mean New York's PPM ratings should be ignored because the Media Rating Council has failed to accredit them? In other words, what weight does this organization have, if any?

It has enough weight for Arbitron to spend tens of millions changing or perfecting methodology, sample and performance to try to achieve accreditation.

The MRC was founded as part of the Congressional investigations of ratings back in the 60's and it could be considered essential that Arbitron get accreditation if they don't want further government oversight as they came close to getting with the actions on The Hill over ethnic sample and proportionality three years ago.

The MRC is composed of some media professionals but mostly of experts from the advertiser and agency side who want to be sure that the ratings allow good metrics to be established for campaign planning.

The biggest loser if eventual accreditation does not happen is radio. Without reliable metrics, advertisers who "buy by the numbers" will simply avoid radio. As long as there is an effort to get into compliance, advertisers will be cautious but not stop using the numbers... folks at the larger agencies are very research-smart and know how to interpret such data. But their patience is not going to be eternal.

 

[scripps]

MRC accedidation is the radio equivalent of rustproofing. Your car might be better having it, but most will do just fine without it.

 

[wadio]

Yeah, but in reality does it mean New York's PPM ratings should be ignored because the Media Rating Council has failed to accredit them? In other words, what weight does this organization have, if any?

It has enough weight for Arbitron to spend tens of millions changing or perfecting methodology, sample and performance to try to achieve accreditation.

The MRC was founded as part of the Congressional investigations of ratings back in the 60's and it could be considered essential that Arbitron get accreditation if they don't want further government oversight as they came close to getting with the actions on The Hill over ethnic sample and proportionality three years ago.

The MRC is composed of some media professionals but mostly of experts from the advertiser and agency side who want to be sure that the ratings allow good metrics to be established for campaign planning.

The biggest loser if eventual accreditation does not happen is radio. Without reliable metrics, advertisers who "buy by the numbers" will simply avoid radio. As long as there is an effort to get into compliance, advertisers will be cautious but not stop using the numbers... folks at the larger agencies are very research-smart and know how to interpret such data. But their patience is not going to be eternal.

David, thanks for the explanation!

This seems to me to be a pretty significant issue yet I never see it mentioned in ratings discussions. I've always been skeptical about the Arbitron ratings -- both diary and PPM -- and maybe this gives credence to my suspicions.

For instance, WOR has for years consistently shown a 12+ share of around 2.2. Doesn't matter if the AM/PM drive lineup is John Gambling/Bob Grant, Walsh & Hannover/Hennican & White or John Gambling/David Paterson -- and regardless of how good or bad WABC's programming is at the time -- the needle never moves. WOR's shift from (mostly) fluff/talk to news/talk should have had some impact.

Maybe the MRC is onto something! If I were an advertiser and I knew about this vote of no-confidence from the MRC, I'd think twice about paying any attention to the numbers.

 

[davideduardo]

For instance, WOR has for years consistently shown a 12+ share of around 2.2. Doesn't matter if the AM/PM drive lineup is John Gambling/Bob Grant, Walsh & Hannover/Hennican & White or John Gambling/David Paterson -- and regardless of how good or bad WABC's programming is at the time -- the needle never moves. WOR's shift from (mostly) fluff/talk to news/talk should have had some impact.

Floating along with no radical changes seems to be something second tier talkers do quite consistently. For example, also-ran KABC in LA has been in an almost eternal slow decline for over two decades, and all the rearranging of the lineup they do from time to time makes little difference.

What we mostly see with WOR is a gradual aging of the audience which suggests somewhat of a heritage listenership who follow the station despite occasional changes but who are not joined by many new listeners. That's not unusual.

Maybe the MRC is onto something! If I were an advertiser and I knew about this vote of no-confidence from the MRC, I'd think twice about paying any attention to the numbers.

It's nowhere near as bad as that. This is not an airline, where "almost reaching the airport" is just not acceptable.

Statistics is the only science where error is not a dirty word. The whole idea of polling is to take a small and cost efficient sample of a population that faithfully represents the whole. The MRC tries to guarantee that the procedures used to get and tabulate the sample are as good as they could be. In the current case, they felt that, of the panel members in certain markets, not enough were using or carrying their meters every day to guarantee those accurate results. But the differences were a few percent overall... a big deal to them... but not exactly a huge deal to the users of the data.

 

[SonoSational18]

New York has never had MRC acreditation since it went PPM. Same with LA, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, Washington, and all but a handful of markets that have PPM. The big news is that MRC pulled previously-granted acreditation in, IIRC, nine markets. The dirty little secret is that it NEVER had the MRC nod in the overwhelming majority off their PPM markets.

 

[davideduardo]

New York has never had MRC acreditation since it went PPM. Same with LA, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, Washington, and all but a handful of markets that have PPM. The big news is that MRC pulled previously-granted acreditation in, IIRC, nine markets. The dirty little secret is that it NEVER had the MRC nod in the overwhelming majority off their PPM markets.

That's not a secret.

However, it is well known that they are a lot closer to overall compliance than they were while they were still rolling out markets.

When Arbitron got very close to a full-blown congressional investigation following the protests of ethnic-targeted stations and groups, they moved to change a number of techniques. The main change was moving to address based recruiting which was one of the main factors why Houston got accreditation right away; the use of this technique came in part from the never-to-happen alliance with Nielsen who uses that system.

Arbitron also moved to improve daily in-tab and to slightly increase sample sizes, and these changes and others resulted in a lessening of the broadcaster pressure on Congress to do something. Arbitron knew, from the tales and stories from the 60's, that a full investigation would bring on regulations, vastly increased costs, and open the door to real competition. At the time, Nielsen was rolling out a diary survey in smaller markets and Arbitron was worried, I believe.

Again, Arbitron had never done a panel based survey. Panels are quite different from one-week polling. Keeping panelists happy for as much as 24 months is a really difficult affair and Arbitron just underestimated every aspect of this. And part of the fear they had of Nielsen had to do with the fact that Nielsen had been doing panels for decades.

Radio also fears the intervention of the government, because that would mean that Arbitron would be responsive to regulators, not radio stations.

So there is no secret... just pressure to get MRC accreditation since the development of MRC oversight kept the government out of ratings in the past.