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Station Streams show in Arbitron, but where's HD?

P

Play Freebird

The July Philadelphia Arbitron PPM numbers were released yesterday, and I happened to notice that WBEB's stream got a cume audience of slightly over 25,000 -- good for 53rd place in the metro. While this number is far below WBEB's first-ranked "over the air" cume of nearly 1.8 million, this is the first time I've seen a station's stream show up in an Arbitron book, so this event rates as an accomplishment.

http://www.radio-info.com/content/arbitron.php?market=007-6cume

However, the various commercial-free HD-2 channels are conspicuously absent, despite all of the promotion that's been aired over the last two years. I thought about this, ran the numbers, and then realized it would probably be impossible for an HD-2 to show in the Philadelphia Arbitron.

By the most optimistic estimate, a million HD receivers have been sold. Philadelphia has a total 12+ population of 4.3 million, compared with a national 12+ pop of about 250 million, or about 1.7 percent of the national audience. Assuming uniform distribution of HD receivers, this would translate to 17,200 radios sold in the market. Probably a bad assumption, as they aren't readily available in medium and smaller markets -- so let's be generous and figure 30,000 HD receivers have been sold in Philadelphia. (And I'll disregard the number which have been returned.)

So... if just one HD-2 channel could attract the interest of half of those receiver owners at least weekly, this would represent a cume of 15,000 person -- but would fall about 10,000 short of the minimum necessary to be included in the book.

Is it any wonder then that station owners don't seem to care about keeping their HD-2 services on the air? It will be years before any of them show in the ratings, unless they're also offered as streams.
 
"A million HD receivers have been sold?" Freebird, my friend, you've just confirmed that especially powerful hallucinogenic drugs are widely available in Philly!! ;) :D

Of course I have no way of confirming this. But if I could I would be willing to bet "a lot more expensive meal than the one we just had at Tom Wahl's" that the actual number of HD Radios in regular use, in the hands of actual listeners and not sitting on dusty "open-box return" shelves or clearance re-sale tables, is somewhere in the tens of thousands. Even THAT might be generous.
 
Freebird, simply not enough radios have been sold, thus not enough people would be listening for HD stations to show up in Aribtron.

It’s a chicken or egg situation. For HD to survive more radios must be sold. And listeners must have compelling reasons to adopt another radio. With the exception of a few early adopters the public hasn’t shown any interest. Compared to Ipods/Iphone sales of HD radios are minuscule for a heavily promoted new technology.

I predict the government will issue a tax rebate or coupon so listeners will be able to adopt HD for free.. LOL Where’s a lobbyist when you need one.
 
Add to that, the fact that more than one station offers an HD-2...Some even HD-3 & that spreads the listenership even thinner.

What I don't understand is my an online stream of the on-air porgram of a station would be rated separately & not just added to the cume of that station. That would be the same as rating HD-1 separately.
 
If HD gains any traction it will cause shares to fracture, almost like cable networks.
And listeners will suffer from over choice.

Because more new people aren’t listening to radio and the next generation could care less, HD ratings will come at the expense of current Am/Fm stations. With more competition for the ears of broadcasters, HD is simply adding even more. And additional radio formats won’t equal an increase in ad dollars. As is broadcasters are feeling more pressure as traditional ad dollars are being shifted to new media.
 
dxer720 said:
What I don't understand is my an online stream of the on-air porgram of a station would be rated separately & not just added to the cume of that station. That would be the same as rating HD-1 separately.
Click to expand...

Some stations delete spots from their Internet streams or sell them separately, so this breakdown provides more accurate accounting of listenership.

Trust me, I haven't been smoking anything funny! The million-receiver estimate was based on the proponents' wishful thinking, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Without any verifiable numbers, we can only guess. But the point I'm trying to make with my little analysis is that the actual HD-2 and HD-3 audience is so small as to be negligible.

Radio pros have questioned why some HD secondary services are silent for days at a time, but this observation actually suggests that the engineers of these stations have set their priorities correctly. The same big companies who claim to be so enthusiastic about HD were also the first to eliminate local engineering positions when their stations were consolidated, so today it's not unusual for one person to maintain several large market AM and FM stations. An overworked CE's time is used much more effectively by keeping the analog transmitters on the air, doing remotes, and repairing the sales computers (all of which help to generate revenue) than bothering with the HD-2 which has an audience too small to sell. (And even if it could be sold, it would take income away from the big sister stations.)

The CEOs of these companies were misled into thinking that the HD installation would require only a big capital expenditure, but operating costs could be neglected. So the current situation comes as no surprise.
 
dxer720 said:
What I don't understand is my an online stream of the on-air porgram of a station would be rated separately & not just added to the cume of that station. That would be the same as rating HD-1 separately.
Click to expand...

Not at all. The PPM works by "hearing" the sub-audible data stream placed on each audio channel by encoders provided by Arbitron to the stations. Each encoder emits a separate and distinct data stream, and each separate audio stream has its own encoding. So, the FM analog and HD1 channels are encoded identically, since they are simulcast. Each HD2 has its own. Each AM and AM-HD are encoded identically. Each Internet stream is encoded. For each separate audio stream, Arbitron provides three boxes: a main encoder, a backup encoder and a monitor (for alerting people when the encoders are off-line...no encoding = no ratings, so it's pretty important to keep them up at all times).

The PPM results break out Internet listening separately from over-the-air listening, which is why they're encoded separately. As dxer720 noted, Internet streams are sold separately from the over-the-air streams, and in many cases they're a separate profit center. They also don't necessarily simulcast 100% of the time, as there are many syndicated programs and PBP sports which must, per the terms of their contracts, be blacked out on the Internet streams (usually so that the syndicator or rights holder can stream them themselves and charge for it, as Major League Baseball does).
 
I suspect there are a lot of people with HD radio and don't know it. Just like many new cars used to come with AM stereo but the owners didn't know it because they never listened to AM. For instance Walmart sell (or sold) a Jenson HD radio which I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't notice the HD logo on the front of the radio. I tried the radio out in the store and it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to switch on the HD. There was no switch marked HD. It turns out you have to push a button marked "select" and you have to know which station is broadcasting in HD. Much to my surprise I actually found a station in HD2. I bet I was the only one in town that actually was listening to it. If the HD switch is hidden on the radio how do they expect anyone to listen to it? Its just like those old portable AM-FM radio's I used to have that had the AM/FM switch hidden on the back or bottom of the radio. No wonder nobody listens.
 
"I suspect there are a lot of people with HD and don't know it." Yes - the Heartbreak of HD tends to be symptomless until it's too late! You could be carrying HD with you, every day, like chronic bronchitis, immune system disorders, pathogens, genetic defects...the list goes on. Get informed. Protect yourself.

Watch and listen for the telltale signs of HD. If you're troubled by a persistent hissing sound, or metallic-sounding voices that sound like "electronically reprocessed to simulate stereo" LPs, or find yourself standing under a tower with a boombox just to get the weather report, or your wife complains about you stringing antenna wire all over your home, you could be suffering from "HD."

Some symptoms are subtle. Like the urge to just turn the radio off and listen to your mp3 player. A professional can help.

For example: if you own the Jensen radio, press and hold the SELECT button until H6Ds##v2ejf**9/?@@ appears in the display. Consult the calendar for the date, press twice for each day (if it's the 18th, press 36 times) and multiply by your birthday. Perform a quick square-root calculation and hold the SELECT button for half of the resulting value in seconds, then push twice more QUICKLY.

PRESTO! You're listening in consumer-friendly HD!

Repeat process for HD2. Perform procedure in reverse to return to analog.
 
Savage said:
"I suspect there are a lot of people with HD and don't know it." Yes - the Heartbreak of HD tends to be symptomless until it's too late! You could be carrying HD with you, every day, like chronic bronchitis, immune system disorders, pathogens, genetic defects...the list goes on. Get informed. Protect yourself.

Watch and listen for the telltale signs of HD. If you're troubled by a persistent hissing sound, or metallic-sounding voices that sound like "electronically reprocessed to simulate stereo" LPs, or find yourself standing under a tower with a boombox just to get the weather report, or your wife complains about you stringing antenna wire all over your home, you could be suffering from "HD."

Some symptoms are subtle. Like the urge to just turn the radio off and listen to your mp3 player. A professional can help.

For example: if you own the Jensen radio, press and hold the SELECT button until H6Ds##v2ejf**9/?@@ appears in the display. Consult the calendar for the date, press twice for each day (if it's the 18th, press 36 times) and multiply by your birthday. Perform a quick square-root calculation and hold the SELECT button for half of the resulting value in seconds, then push twice more QUICKLY.

PRESTO! You're listening in consumer-friendly HD!

Repeat process for HD2. Perform procedure in reverse to return to analog.
Click to expand...

Yes, if you are suffering from HD-Syndrome, run don't walk to your nearest analog clinic and buy an analog radio to relieve your relentless suffering. There are also many on line IBOC support groups for people with finger tendinitis, persistent headache, pathological confusion, hi frequency hiss deafness and the myriad other insidious symptoms that HD-Syndrome can cause the average unsuspecting person who buys one of these receivers which has had HD surreptitiously installed unbeknownst to the unsuspecting buyer. Unfortunately HD is to your radio what a virus is to your computer and there are no known RF firewalls yet that will stop it from invading your radio whether analog or HD. So if you hear or see any of the tell tale signs such as a dimly flickering light accompanied by noise or silence if you are 10 or more miles from the station, loud whooshing sounds with no apparent carrier surrounding and maybe even covering up other stations if you are up to 1500 miles away, artificial saccharine sounding high frequency tones or maybe even your favorite station has just disappeared from the dial under a pile 'o noise, your radio may have been infected either directly by installation or indirectly by tuning in to an infected station. The first malady has no known cure, the second can be cured by turning your dial and finding an IBOC-free zone. You will know this by the absence of the above symptoms accompanied by a much more natural sound along with vastly improved range and a much narrower station footprint.
 
Recent national studies have shown a new long-term consequences of being infected with "HD" which afflict radio broadcast professionals. They include increased workloads with accompanying lower pay, local advertising revenues reduced and fragmented among multiple signals (known colloquially in the industry as 'pi**ing in the soup'), loss of free time due to handling listener and employee QRM/QRN complaints, hostility and verbal abuse from upper management, inadequate sleep due to increased maintenance demands. Smaller (non-Alliance) broadcasters are also presenting with the HD symptom called "looming insolvency" after conversion.

But the worst long-term career-health consequence of long-term exposure to HD: loss of respect among peers, because of your voluntary association with the worst technical blunder in the history of broadcasting.

Install HD today. Be branded a loser forever!
 
Sally Struthers, says just $75.00 a day can help feed former radio executives who lost their careers because of the HD radio plight. The NAB has set up an emergency fund to help Poverty stricken HD executives and station owners. $75.00 a day goes a long way to clothe and feed the deflated egos of once full of themselves former radio warriors. Wouldn’t you like to make a difference?
 
Sure, $75 a day feeds deposed ex-radio executives unhorsed by HD.

But how much a day does it cost to feed Sally Struthers??? :eek: :eek:
 
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