Several weeks ago I reported on the major change in how radio listenership is about to be measured in Kansas City.
K.C. will be converted from a Diary reporting to a Personal People Meter or PPM market.
The changeover has now been implemented and the first solid ratings info using the new system will become available December 31, 2009.
To say that local radio suits are nervous about their first set of numbers achieved under the new system would be an understatement.
But let’s back up minute.
Up until now Arbitron selected listeners pretty much at random and had them fill out a quarterly diary of their daily listening habits.
Pretty unscientific,
jojo
radio is dying. The numbers of 18-40 year olds
listening to radio is dropping dramatically.
They don’t like radio..want ipods and other music
devices and now that radio is cutting talent
we can expect radio to take the same path as
print.
plus streaming radio by am listeners is also
hurting them and all this will mean huge
losses by radio groups.
Wyco
Man, I wish I was one of the people that had one of these things.
rick
The real question is how are these listeners selected? You can have the right demographics but still have it tilted to favor a specific category. Let’s say I picked that 25% of the black audience based on church membership. Would I then be surprised that a local gospel station appeared to have a high listener-ship? Or maybe I went to sports bars to find my male white audience and then sports radio appeared to have high numbers. So how people are picked is important.
Alfred
Rick…..do you do anything in real life?
You are on this web page waaaaay too much.
rick
well I don’t have a job as Batman’s butler so i have to do something. And if you were following closely you would know that I hadn’t posted for several days and now trying to catch up. But thanks for your concern.
“MOM can I come out of the basement now and see if my comic books have arrived yet.”
smartman
Jack: What about HD, Sirius, XM? What if a business has a station on playing background music that is not really being “actively” listened to. In your opinion is this really better or does it just muddy up the water?
jack
Hey smartman:
The Sirius-XM question did come up in the Q & A part of the meeting.
Arbitron said that they have had conversations with them but it would mean sending out a separate signal (for encoding) with each of their formats.
In other words, don’t look for that to happen in the near future.
Remember that Sirius-XM is in terrible financial shape.
As for backround music services, they won’t be picked up by the PPM’s as they do not send a ‘measuring tone.’
Finally stations don’t HAVE to participate. It’s a pretty expensive item for them. But in competitive markets they kind’a have to.