ratings ,PPM ,etc.

[alok]

In NYC KISS-FM 98.7 will go sports. EMMIS CEO Jeff Smulyan said that with recent rating changes , PPM's , it is not possible to find success with KISS-FM ,I don't understand ?

How exactly does PPM's measure now vs. the way it was done before ? I think I understand the basic premise here ( PPM's are more high techie ) but please somebody that knows more explain how it can suddenly "make a format dead " when overall in the ratings you are doing decent ?

Al

 

[DavidKaye]

but please somebody that knows more explain how it can suddenly "make a format dead " when overall in the ratings you are doing decent ?

Because (for the umpteenth time), overall ratings do not matter.

 

[michael hagerty]

In NYC KISS-FM 98.7 will go sports. EMMIS CEO Jeff Smulyan said that with recent rating changes , PPM's , it is not possible to find success with KISS-FM ,I don't understand ?

How exactly does PPM's measure now vs. the way it was done before ? I think I understand the basic premise here ( PPM's are more high techie ) but please somebody that knows more explain how it can suddenly "make a format dead " when overall in the ratings you are doing decent ?

Al

Al: Previously ratings were based on diaries kept by listeners, who were supposed to write down what time they turned on the radio, to what station, what time they changed stations, to which station, and so on until they turned the radio off...and noted that occurrence.

Tough to do while at the wheel of a car during a 60-minute commute that might involve pushing the buttons on the car radio 10 or 15 times. What ended up happening is that people filled in the diary later (sometimes on the day it was due back, after a week worth of listening) based on their memory of what they listened to. The simplest thing to do is to write down their two or three favorite stations and ballpark some times.

PPMs actually receive a code in the radio signal and measures what that person hears on the spot. So let's take San Francisco. Before, you'd write down that you listened to Kiss half the time and Wild half the time during your two hours in the car each day...so each station gets 5 hours worth of listening from you in a work week. But with PPM, if you tune away while Wild and Kiss are in commercial breaks, that gets recorded. Maybe you find another station that's okay for a song or two. So Wild and Kiss maybe get 20 minutes of listening time from you a day. That's a third of what you used to write down.

But it's more complex than that. PPMs measure what you're exposed to, not what you choose. So if you work in a business that plays KOIT all day long, your PPM device registers that. If the deli where you grab lunch every day plays KFOG, it measures that.

Suddenly you've gone from giving Wild and Kiss 5 hours each in a workweek to this:

KOIT: 40 hours

KFOG: 5 hours

Miscellaneous stations you tuned to in the car during commercial breaks on Wild and Kiss: 3 hours, 40 minutes

Wild: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Kiss: 1 hour, 40 minutes

PPMs eliminate a lot of phantom listening. Advertisers only want to know if you're hearing their spot, not what your favorite station is.

 

[alok]

Because (for the umpteenth time), overall ratings do not matter.


Dave ,

go write another Blacksmith Story


Al

 

[alok]

Mike,

Thank You for the mature response to my question.

Al

How exactly does PPM's measure now vs. the way it was done before ? I think I understand the basic premise here ( PPM's are more high techie ) but please somebody that knows more explain how it can suddenly "make a format dead " when overall in the ratings you are doing decent ?

Al




[/quote]

Al: Previously ratings were based on diaries kept by listeners, who were supposed to write down what time they turned on the radio, to what station, what time they changed stations, to which station, and so on until they turned the radio off...and noted that occurrence.

Tough to do while at the wheel of a car during a 60-minute commute that might involve pushing the buttons on the car radio 10 or 15 times. What ended up happening is that people filled in the diary later (sometimes on the day it was due back, after a week worth of listening) based on their memory of what they listened to. The simplest thing to do is to write down their two or three favorite stations and ballpark some times.

PPMs actually receive a code in the radio signal and measures what that person hears on the spot. So let's take San Francisco. Before, you'd write down that you listened to Kiss half the time and Wild half the time during your two hours in the car each day...so each station gets 5 hours worth of listening from you in a work week. But with PPM, if you tune away while Wild and Kiss are in commercial breaks, that gets recorded. Maybe you find another station that's okay for a song or two. So Wild and Kiss maybe get 20 minutes of listening time from you a day. That's a third of what you used to write down.

But it's more complex than that. PPMs measure what you're exposed to, not what you choose. So if you work in a business that plays KOIT all day long, your PPM device registers that. If the deli where you grab lunch every day plays KFOG, it measures that.

Suddenly you've gone from giving Wild and Kiss 5 hours each in a workweek to this:

KOIT: 40 hours

KFOG: 5 hours

Miscellaneous stations you tuned to in the car during commercial breaks on Wild and Kiss: 3 hours, 40 minutes

Wild: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Kiss: 1 hour, 40 minutes

PPMs eliminate a lot of phantom listening. Advertisers only want to know if you're hearing their spot, not what your favorite station is.
[/quote]

 

[SFStatic]

PPM does take care of the phantom listening or beauty contest ratings, but Michael made a very important point. PPM does NOT measure listening...it measures HEARING. Any station that is encoded which can be heard by the panelist is picked up and recorded by the meter. If you walk through a store and look around for 10 minutes, totally oblivious to what's playing over the system, KOIT may be on and they will get credit for that 10 minutes even if you had no clue what was playing and could have cared less. This is one of the factors that has contributed to some formats taking a huge hit in PPM and others suddenly doing better than they have in years.

With MM's software, you can literally overlay a graph of the listening minute by minute with the programming, and see if listening drops off during a song, spot, jock bit, etc. It's pretty amazing.

 

[michael hagerty]

PPM does take care of the phantom listening or beauty contest ratings, but Michael made a very important point. PPM does NOT measure listening...it measures HEARING. Any station that is encoded which can be heard by the panelist is picked up and recorded by the meter. If you walk through a store and look around for 10 minutes, totally oblivious to what's playing over the system, KOIT may be on and they will get credit for that 10 minutes even if you had no clue what was playing and could have cared less.

True. Someone on another board asked how advertisers feel about the fact that you might be oblivious...not engaged...with accidental or incidental listening. Ultimately, they probably don't care. Advertising is a numbers game when it comes to impressions. Generally, it takes several impressions for an ad to become effective. Even though you may not be consciously aware Adele is on KOIT when you're walking through a store, the Macy's ad that plays will register on some level and add to the total number of times you've heard it.

It's now no longer about finding out what music, personalities or stations people like and buying advertising on them. It's purely about buying what's being heard, no matter the circumstance.

In the 60s and 70s, foreground stations like KSFO and KNBR used to argue that their music and personalities made an ad on their air more valuable than the same spot on background stations like KABL and KOIT, where listeners weren't paying as much attention. The advertisers have fixed that through sheer tonnage...it's reach and frequency.

 

[DavidKaye]

PPM does take care of the phantom listening or beauty contest ratings, but Michael made a very important point. PPM does NOT measure listening...it measures HEARING.

Commercial radio is advertiser-driven, so it makes the most sense to measure hearing rather than listening because people are motivated to buy products and services based on the number of impressions. It doesn't appear to matter if those impressions are intentional or not, which is why the big advertisers pay to be on billboards that expose drivers to 1 or 2 seconds of eye contact. The impression is enough.

 

[bringbackradio]

In NYC KISS-FM 98.7 will go sports. EMMIS CEO Jeff Smulyan said that with recent rating changes , PPM's , it is not possible to find success with KISS-FM ,I don't understand ?

In the case of urban radio in the Bay Area, before PPM was utilized, KBLX was among the Top 10 rated stations. Not sure if it reached the Top 5 in ratings but there were times when it surpassed KMEL in some reports and traded places with KISQ ever so often. Even when the diary keeping was intact, the station survived certain markets like Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Boston where their heritage urban stations KKBT/KRBV, WAMO and WILD respectively have bitten the dust. And these markets, like the Bay Area, have 10% Blacks or less in the demos. After the PPM transition, it survived Tampa losing WTMP and St. Louis losing KATZ.

Honestly PPM has not been urban radio friendly in terms of money making and demographic measuring in most major cities. KMEL went from being a #1/#2/Top 5 station to ranking in the Top 15 just two years ago for that reason; they had to tighten its playlist to go back in the Top 10 ranking, and now its an urban station that had to forego most R&B titles that most other mainstream urbans touch today. KBLX has fallen into the Top 20 but has still maintained a huge following in the urban sect. It's a matter of time if Entercom can benefit from businesses in Oakland and the East Bay having the station in the background like it did Inner City-era based on where KBLX's core listenership is (they were located in Berkeley once from the KRE era).

 

[bringbackradio]

Duplicate post again due to editing. Sorry

 

[bringbackradio]

duplicate post

 

[DavidKaye]

Honestly PPM has not been urban radio friendly in terms of money making and demographic measuring in most major cities.

It's good that you used the word, "honestly" in your post. It's all about honesty and the lack of it. This is what drove down not only the urban and ethnic stations, but also KGO. People were not honest in their diary reporting. It's interesting that the ethnic broadcasters were the first to scream about this, even before PPM was in place. They actually KNEW that their listeners were not reporting honestly.

There's no getting around PPM -- the person has to physically be wearing the unit (it shuts down if it's not jiggled enough), and they have to be in the presence of the audio of an encoded station. The only fault I see is that Arbitron needs way more PPM units and people to wear them (or KKIQ will still show up from time to time as the #5 station in the market overnights).

 

[DJBigOne]

They actually KNEW that their listeners were not reporting honestly.

K...N...E...W? That was my first thought when I saw your post. Sorry, it must be Friday...Thank God!

 

[davideduardo]

It's interesting that the ethnic broadcasters were the first to scream about this, even before PPM was in place. They actually KNEW that their listeners were not reporting honestly.

As the person who has looked at more Hispanic diaries than anyone else on the planet, I can say that this is not an accurate statement.

What Hispanic research experts knew is that, in a reflection of cultural values, first generation Hispanics tended to think in terms of hours and, sometimes, half hours... not the more granular precision of non-ethnic listeners.

What that meant is that listening from 6:15 to 6:50 was written as "6 to 7" and a span with many interruptions such as lunch and breaks that started around 9 AM and ended around 3 PM was written in as "9 to 3"

While there was TSL compression among all listeners, it was most extreme among Hispanics. Coupled with a deficient recruit system in all PPM markets except for Houston, the result was generally lower shares for Spanish language stations in the PPM than in the diary survey. But the cause was part cultural and part poor methodology, not any "voting" or exaggeration by Hispanic listeners.

There's no getting around PPM -- the person has to physically be wearing the unit (it shuts down if it's not jiggled enough),

Actually, a PPM that is taken to work and set on a desk or counter for most of the day will continue to be active. All it takes is the kind of movement that an algorithm would consider to be normal for a human being for the meter to be "in tab" for the day. The meters don't "shut down" in any case; the data they collect is not used if the panelist is not considered in-tab on a particular day based on lack of movement.

The only fault I see is that Arbitron needs way more PPM units and people to wear them (or KKIQ will still show up from time to time as the #5 station in the market overnights).

We are not going to get any significant number of additional panelists as that would require an increase in costs to the subscribers who are still adjusting to lower revenue and a 60% increase of ratings service costs.

 

[DavidKaye]

As the person who has looked at more Hispanic diaries than anyone else on the planet, I can say that this is not an accurate statement.

Okay, naturally I'll defer to you on this, but is this true of stations serving other groups? I remember the big stink about PPM from those broadcasters even before PPM was in place. They said that their numbers would come out lower under PPM. Why would they have said that if they weren't aware of people fudging the diaries?

What that meant is that listening from 6:15 to 6:50 was written as "6 to 7" and a span with many interruptions such as lunch and breaks that started around 9 AM and ended around 3 PM was written in as "9 to 3"

But I have never known of any non-Hispanic (aka "mainstream") listeners to say that they listened to KGO or KFOG from 6:15am to 6:50, either. And the diaries I've seen over the years certainly didn't represent that granularity, except for the occasional person who wanted to make the diary "look accurate". But the ones I've examined were mainly "6 to 7", etc.

While there was TSL compression among all listeners, it was most extreme among Hispanics. Coupled with a deficient recruit system in all PPM markets except for Houston, the result was generally lower shares for Spanish language stations in the PPM than in the diary survey. But the cause was part cultural and part poor methodology, not any "voting" or exaggeration by Hispanic listeners.

Okay, I can definitely see a skew because of failure to get a representative sample, but I thought that Arbitron would have been especially eager to get it right the first time, owing to the large amount of resistance there was to PPM.

Actually, a PPM that is taken to work and set on a desk or counter for most of the day will continue to be active. All it takes is the kind of movement that an algorithm would consider to be normal for a human being for the meter to be "in tab" for the day. The meters don't "shut down" in any case; the data they collect is not used if the panelist is not considered in-tab on a particular day based on lack of movement.

I was hoping nobody would "correct" me on that. I know that it doesn't shut down, but I was just trying to say it in a simple way. I'm not sure if this was used in the final algorithm, but I had been told early in the PPM development that the unit had to be moved every 35 minutes to report "in tab". This may, of course, be totally different from the way it was eventually developed.

 

[robman]

[/quote]
Honestly PPM has not been urban radio friendly in terms of money making and demographic measuring in most major cities. KMEL went from being a #1/#2/Top 5 station to ranking in the Top 15 just two years ago for that reason;
[/quote]


Not the case when you look at PPM ratings. PPM started in July of 2008 in SF. KMEL was in the top 5 immediately in PPM. It did fall back in the ratings in late 2009, then the PD was replaced in 2010 and it bounced back under the new PD. KBLX was in the Top 10 (and Top 5 25-54) in PPM as recent as early 2010, which was nearly two years into PPM. Clearly Urban gets ratings in PPM, but they have to be well programmed...just like any station.

 

[davideduardo]

Okay, naturally I'll defer to you on this, but is this true of stations serving other groups? I remember the big stink about PPM from those broadcasters even before PPM was in place. They said that their numbers would come out lower under PPM. Why would they have said that if they weren't aware of people fudging the diaries?

The mistake was not knowing that the diary was the real problem. The representatives from the various groups who protested the PPM had not among them a single person who had ever done a diary review, and they did not know the degree to which rounding was prevalent. So they did not know how much they would lose in the PPM.

The PPM produced huge increases in cume for general market stations since phantom cume and "hearing" was captured, but ethnic stations could not grow anywhere nearly as much since they only appealed to smaller portions of a market. Lower cume, plus shrunken TSL meant decreases in overall share.

But I have never known of any non-Hispanic (aka "mainstream") listeners to say that they listened to KGO or KFOG from 6:15am to 6:50, either.

But general market non-Hispanic diaries tend to be fairly granular right down to quarter hours and definitely half-hours. For example, many people who know they get to work at 8:50 day after day to be able to punch in at 9 will actually write the precise time down. Hispanics tend to round up to the approximate hour, not down, and not with quarter hour precision.

Okay, I can definitely see a skew because of failure to get a representative sample, but I thought that Arbitron would have been especially eager to get it right the first time, owing to the large amount of resistance there was to PPM.

Arbitron only employed address based recruiting in Houston because the Houston test began when there was still an association with Nielsen to make the PPM a dual radio and TV service. Nielsen imposed address based recruiting, but by the time other markets rolled out Nielsen was out and normal phone-based sample selection was used because it is so much cheaper. But it is deficient.

... but I had been told early in the PPM development that the unit had to be moved every 35 minutes to report "in tab". This may, of course, be totally different from the way it was eventually developed.

The meter just keeps chugging along... it is in the tabulation that a determination is made whether the meter met the necessary "hours in motion" (IIRC, 8 for most, 6 for kids) has been met to be in-tab.

 

[SFStatic]

David E is correct on the times...having reviewed many diaries (albeit not the quantity David has!), I have seen this. Have also seen 12 hours of listening at a time by elderly folks...we used to joke that it was because they couldn't get up out of the chair to change the channel! Most demos under 65, however, did record times as all of those in the world of work 'live by the clock' anyway.

The PPM does exaggerate some formats and hoses others, but it is more accurate that the diaries were, so at least it's not such a 'beauty contest' anymore. I have previously posted my objection that it records hearing not listening, but as yet, no one has come up with a work around to rectify that.

 

[LKellerIII]

David E is correct on the times...having reviewed many diaries (albeit not the quantity David has!), I have seen this. Have also seen 12 hours of listening at a time by elderly folks...we used to joke that it was because they couldn't get up out of the chair to change the channel! Most demos under 65, however, did record times as all of those in the world of work 'live by the clock' anyway.

Sounds like my late mother-in-law. She'd listen to KGO (talk) for hours on end, though she would switch for Giants baseball or 49ers football. She had macular degeneration in her later years, so radio did better for her than TV for sports.

 

[michael hagerty]

I have previously posted my objection that it records hearing not listening, but as yet, no one has come up with a work around to rectify that.

I doubt that they will. Ad agencies just want to know whether you were exposed to their ad, not whether you were enjoying yourself at the time. By the end of the week, and certainly the month, your brain isn't segregating the few dozen car dealer ads based on whether you actively tuned to the station where you heard it or not.