Re: Please substantiate.
> > Funny, but no one else has ever heard of any of this
> stuff.
> > sounds like excuses ignorant people use to mask the fact
> > that they have tanked in the ratings.
>
> > Question: you defy commonly accepted facts and practices
> at
> > every step. Are you actually trolling just for fun to see
> > how far we will engage you in debate?
> >
>
>
> Okay, if you're going to start with the name calling and the
> officious how-dare-
> you-question-me attitude, maybe we should let this thread
> rest.
There is noting remotely clsoe to name calling in suggesting that a series of posts that attack yet do not substantiate the allegations might be a troll post. A troll post is one which states the absurd, the wrong or the misleading and claims it as fact. So far, all your posts fit this profile.
I thought I was giving you the courtesy of asking you to clarify and substantiate what are, otherwise, outlandish claims.
Since many readers here are not radio professionals, and may not be familiar with how ratings are done and what they are used for. Posting misleading or untrue data harms the understanding of radio.
Heck, if a writer for the New York times confused share with cume, how easy do you think all this arcane and specialized jargon and data is to understand by the layman? And there are many "out in radioland" who enjoy knowing how the different stations stack up, just as we enjoy knowing what song is #1 this week.
Your posts do a disservice to them and to radio.
> I know what I saw and heard and I am standing by what
> I said.
You have not indicate the "when, where and how" of these alleged incidents.
Nobody I know has eaver heard of diaries from the wrong market ending up in-tab or.
Diaries can not be "missent" as diaries are generec, specific only to the week they are used, but not to the market. A combination of controls restricts a diary to the ZIP code where it ws placed, which also controls the market it is tabbed in.
Nobody, including leading group programmers and researchers, has ever heard of any inflation or exaggeration of listening levels... which is impossible in a random probability sample, anyway.
> Your experiences are obviously different and you're
> standing by your statements, but that does not make either
> of us totally right or totally wrong.
Since nobody I polled has ever heard of any of the things you claim, there is no ground for giving you any credibility if you do not produce market, survey and specific occurances. Otherwise, you are posting cheap shots.
Arbitron does make mistakes. Diaries do get into the hands of media employees. Arbitron is very open about how it deals with this. If the mistakes (tabulation, slogan accreditation, ascription, etc) materially afgfects the survey, it is re-issued. I have had two books reissued in the last 6 years (Puerto Rico), and have been responsible for the only reissue of a trend in the last 10 years (San Francisco). What are your creds?
> The misplaced-diary
> thing, for example, was a big scandal here a few years back.
> Unfortunately, the eastern NC market is notorious for being
> at least two years behind the curve in everything. I suspect
> we'll be using listener diaries for some time to come.
PPM will roll out in the top 50 markets over the next 3 to 4 years, contingent on clients paying the roughly 40% additional cost (not a given) and the system passing its test in Houston... where two major broadcast groups are not particpating.
Smaller markets will likely be on the diary for a longer time, if not always.
Tell us, please, what happened in your market, tell us what market it is, and I will verify with Arbitron. One thing is having a sample shortage (compensated by additonal weighting) and another is the chicanery you suggest. So far, you have not triggered anything in the memory of anyone who follows Arbitron closely.
>
> We could debate this until the proverbial cows come home,
> but at the end of the day we're both on the same side of the
> fence. I've always looked at these things from a somewhat
> cynical point of view, but it's because I want to see them
> work better. That sometimes offends people who have a
> vested interest in maintaining the status quo, but that's
> their problem. The PPM meter system will go a long way
> towards minimizing that margin of error so zealously
> defended elsewhere in this thread.
As I said, the PPM will not reduce the margin of error. In fact, since the weekly PPM sample is about 1/3 of the size of the weekly diary sample, the margin of error in the most granular data increases significantly... by about one standard error, in fact. However, since the diary is based on 12 different weekly samples, and the PPM uses a panel, there are other issues that do not make them strictly comparable.
The fact is that the prior PPM testing gave every station nearly exactly the same shares the concurrent diary survey did. PPM does not change things on a 12 week study. It does allwo advertisers to look at all electronic media together and allows greater granularity without reducing reliability... a daily tab would be as accurate as one covering 12 weeks in the PPM method.
>
> We actually want the same thing- a better and more exact
> rating system- so let's shake hands and go back to our
> neutral corners. Peace, we out.
We already have an exact system, using time proven polling techniques. But, as America becomes more mobile (no home phones, for example) it is necessary to make sure future samples will be proportional to the raw population or universe. The PPM is somewhat better. Today, the diary is perfectly acceptable.
